the burnt up gasses are pushed out the exhaust pipe and the cycle starts again.
the more air and gas you can burn the more torque you generate. so to help this out, you need to have the best breathability possible. a performance intake and exhaust will be much less restrictive than the stock ones and let the engine get more air in. the exhaust works by letting the engine push out as much of the burnt up gas as possible letting the cylinder fill up with fresh cool burnable air on the next cycle. the intake works by giving the air a less restrictive pathway into the cylinders just like breathing through a small straw then switching to a large one.
now another easy to do mod is to reprogram the engines computer.
because of the physical properties of how an engine runs and the chemical properties of air mixed with gas, the ratios for maximum efficiency for fuel economy are different than those for power. by changing how much fuel is mixed in with the air, you can develop slightly more torque with the same engine. if you do this reprogramming after additional parts have been added, then the computer (ECU) will know how much fuel to inject into the cylinders and provide a lot more power than if it were just the reprogramming alone.
past this, there's not much you can really do without going into serious expenses.
I guess you could always try to make the car lighter by removing things you don't need like a spare tire but then you always run the risk of being stranded with a flat.
another very popular way to decrease weight is to install lighter wheels. lightweight wheels reduce weight by quite a bit but the effects aren't just that. since wheels are part of the cars unsprung mass (mass that is not held up by the suspension springs), they have a much larger effect on moving the car around than sprung mass. wheels also rotate and with this rotation comes rotational inertia. rotational inertia keeps the car wanting to stay in a constant state. increasing or decreasing speed or turning are harder to do with more rotational inertia which is why the effects of changing to lightweight tires go beyond the basic power to weight ratio benefits. in many cases they can also make your car look better too.
i know you said you didn't care much about having a very fast car but really all these changes will barely do anything especially the engine ones considering your car isn't turbocharged (the intake, exhaust and ECU mods work best on a turbo engine). an ECU reprogramming also works great for increasing power because they can raise the RPM limit. since you don't seem interested in full out acceleration I didnt mention this in detail but i feel it's worth mentioning. also worth mentioning is that depending on how advanced the ECU reprogramming is, your car could actually improve in fuel economy as well. (the same parameters that are changed to bring about more power/torque can also be changed to get better fuel economy). The best effect that you can have on speed is to improve your driving technique. make sure to be in the appropriate gear to accelerate. sure keeping the car at low RPMs is economic but downshifting to bring it up to higher RPMs will provide more power for getting up to speed. proper gear management and predictive driving (knowing when you will need to accelerate) will work wonders on every car. where hardware mods may not always work as desired.
if you feel that better acceleration is worth the investment, you should go with a turbo system. turbos force much more air into the cylinders increasing torque and power. in combination with the mods I already mentioned, you can gain a lot more acceleration at the cost of reliability or a decent amount with not that big of a hit on reliability. turbo kits can be quite expensive so you need to really think about your desires and how much you'd be willing to pay for them.
you can also get a supercharger kit which requires much less work than a turbo kit at the cost of lower high RPM performance. (superchargers increase low to mid RPM response and torque). just keep in mind that since your car is very new, there's a chance that these mods don't exist for it yet.
ONLY way to "make it go faster at lower RPM" is to change gear ratio in final drive to a higher (lower numerically) number. With transaxle car, must be done in gearbox vs. differential on rear-drive car.
all 4 cylinder cars need to be cranked up to high rpm's to go fast in my opinion. cheapest thing you could do would be a CAI. then performance exhaust. you may not be going that much faster but you'll sound a hell of a lot better.
There are no magic beans which you can just add as much as you desire. Most crap kids add to their cars don't really do anything, like a CAI.
Add A perf exhaust, a hot cam, Get a programmable ecu then get it mapped. Maybe headers and a turbo too.
Drop down a gear and really use the throttle, RPM is not linked to fuel usage and your car will not explode if it hit the limiter.
Honda fours -- especially *that* four -- love to rev. Give it some gas. (If your next thought is "But gas mileage!" what are you doing in an Acura? Clearly you were born to drive a Civic.)
Push it off a cliff.
have a 2014 acura ilx. it's 4-cylinder engine. not trying to make it into some super fast car that accelerates ridiculously. just want it to feel as if its moving a little easier when i hit the gas. any suggestions? once again, not tryna turn this into a car for the world touring car championship. just want to go a little faster at lower rpm
