linuxman51
01-01-2004, 07:36 PM
This is *not* about body mods and such.
preface:
Recently theres been a surge in people who've dropped money, time, parts, sweat, blood, tears, etc into their cars, and then didnt get the results they expected or wanted. This is obviously counter productive, wasteful for those on a limited budget, people get mad at their cars, not a pretty sight. I don't consider myself to be some sort of volvo or tuning guru, I do operate on an extremely limited budget, and I have gotten decent results it would seem (altho hardly outstanding). I really hope some of the other folks who know what i'm going to be getting at will chime in and round this thing out, as I belive it will bring focus and order to peoples cars, and we can all start turning out some really kickass numbers on the street, strip, and dyno.
/preface 8-)
The first thing we should do when we decide that its time to up our car's output,handling,what have you, is come up with a plan. A serious plan. Not "I wanna have a badass super fast volvo y0 with a big turbo and bigger exhaust and the latest hotrod cam with a freighliner intercooler and a superduper ultra highcompression engine and a 1000shot of nos". A decent goal would something along the lines of "I would like to run mid 14's with ease" or "I want a reliable XXX hp".
Once you've established your goal, you need to come up with a plan. A goal without a plan is wishful thinking. "I wanna run 11's" "How are you going to do that?" "Well, I dunno, a lot of boost I suppose". Not getting anywhere with that, what ultimately ends up happening is you post up your goals, people call you a poser, you get mad, and end up with a civic. Not the desired result :). As with anything else in life, you're going to have to choose from multiple paths, or roll your own, to get where you want to be. This part of planning your project is going to involve research as well. Possibly the worst thing you could do is this: "I want to run 13's, to do that i'm going to need a bigger turbo. Bob has a bigger turbo for $XXX, I'm going to buy that turbo". What you'll end up with is a hit or miss setup.. If you dont sit down, do the math, decide BEFORE you buy parts exactly HOW you plan on getting into the 13's, you stand a VERY good chance of getting the wrong combination of parts, or maybe even just one thats going to hold you back or make it difficult to proceed. You don't want to limit your options right from the beginning.
Also, when planning these things, don't focus solely on one area of the car. What good does an engine that lays down 400 ft/lbs at 3500 rpms and then goes on to make 350hp at 6k if you can't put the power down (either your transmission won't hold the power, the rear end wont, you dont have an lsd/locker, you twisted the frame and hurt your funny bone, etc).
Once you've laid your goal out, and come up with a doable plan, then you go forth and start modifying, kicking ass, and taking names (or saving and hording parts, what have you). BUT, and perhaps the most important part of the equation, you need to set a finshed by date (otherwise, I've got a couple different goals, great plans to get there, but nowhere near the kind of money it'll take) otherwise you're back to square one with a great dream. Set a date, outline it on paper, and come up with a means to keep yourself honest (check list of parts or something like that).. And stick with it.
Look around, look at the top 5 or 10 from each coast in the drags competition... They didnt get there by arbitrarily slapping parts on their cars (well maybe some did, but the top top few didnt). Everyone's guilty this, myself included(hey.. cool.. ipd's cam will take 1.2 seconds off my 0-60 time! $200 I should have never spent). The only time you're really and truely on your own is if you're doing something no one else has done or talked about(i.e. the high compression turbo, things like that), where you can't really predict exactly how things are going to work out. I don't really talk about the "f+t" project a lot, but I literally spent 6+ months looking around, asking questions (to volvo and non volvo people alike), measuring, speculating, etc, but there was a learning curve there after we got it on the road.
Question everything, don't just accept something as law because one or two (or 20 :roll: ) people say something.. try and think about why they would say what they did. If they've had hands on experience, it might pay to listen. If they're merely speculating, consider it, think about it, but dont accept it as gospel. Remeber, its *your* car, not theirs, so you ultimately need to make the choice and ya oughta know why you made the choice you did. I chose to go the high compression turbo route based on roto re me's experience and success with his nissan, and the fact that I had a spare turbo setup out of a car with a hosed cylinder head made it all that much easier. If I had listened to the people on the turbobricks mailing list and more so the people on the brickboard, there would be no high compression turbo. Does that make me a badass for doing it? No. I didn't do it alone, I had a lot of help from several people. What something will do for your public status shouldn't be part of your decision making process.
And keep in mind, the mechanical aspect of a project normally doesnt even account for half of the total time invested, realistically its going to be a very small portion of time, so when you're laying out your plans keep that in mind. The reason I laid down the time I did in my car with the stuff i've got isnt because of an inheirant greatness surounding my motor, or because I'm a god at megasquirt (i'm not, actually i kinda suck at tuning my car hahaha) Its because me and roto re me have hundreds and hundreds of hours in the tuning and tinkering. So keep that in mind.
Question everything down to the small parts. The best projects have the most time invested in planning
preface:
Recently theres been a surge in people who've dropped money, time, parts, sweat, blood, tears, etc into their cars, and then didnt get the results they expected or wanted. This is obviously counter productive, wasteful for those on a limited budget, people get mad at their cars, not a pretty sight. I don't consider myself to be some sort of volvo or tuning guru, I do operate on an extremely limited budget, and I have gotten decent results it would seem (altho hardly outstanding). I really hope some of the other folks who know what i'm going to be getting at will chime in and round this thing out, as I belive it will bring focus and order to peoples cars, and we can all start turning out some really kickass numbers on the street, strip, and dyno.
/preface 8-)
The first thing we should do when we decide that its time to up our car's output,handling,what have you, is come up with a plan. A serious plan. Not "I wanna have a badass super fast volvo y0 with a big turbo and bigger exhaust and the latest hotrod cam with a freighliner intercooler and a superduper ultra highcompression engine and a 1000shot of nos". A decent goal would something along the lines of "I would like to run mid 14's with ease" or "I want a reliable XXX hp".
Once you've established your goal, you need to come up with a plan. A goal without a plan is wishful thinking. "I wanna run 11's" "How are you going to do that?" "Well, I dunno, a lot of boost I suppose". Not getting anywhere with that, what ultimately ends up happening is you post up your goals, people call you a poser, you get mad, and end up with a civic. Not the desired result :). As with anything else in life, you're going to have to choose from multiple paths, or roll your own, to get where you want to be. This part of planning your project is going to involve research as well. Possibly the worst thing you could do is this: "I want to run 13's, to do that i'm going to need a bigger turbo. Bob has a bigger turbo for $XXX, I'm going to buy that turbo". What you'll end up with is a hit or miss setup.. If you dont sit down, do the math, decide BEFORE you buy parts exactly HOW you plan on getting into the 13's, you stand a VERY good chance of getting the wrong combination of parts, or maybe even just one thats going to hold you back or make it difficult to proceed. You don't want to limit your options right from the beginning.
Also, when planning these things, don't focus solely on one area of the car. What good does an engine that lays down 400 ft/lbs at 3500 rpms and then goes on to make 350hp at 6k if you can't put the power down (either your transmission won't hold the power, the rear end wont, you dont have an lsd/locker, you twisted the frame and hurt your funny bone, etc).
Once you've laid your goal out, and come up with a doable plan, then you go forth and start modifying, kicking ass, and taking names (or saving and hording parts, what have you). BUT, and perhaps the most important part of the equation, you need to set a finshed by date (otherwise, I've got a couple different goals, great plans to get there, but nowhere near the kind of money it'll take) otherwise you're back to square one with a great dream. Set a date, outline it on paper, and come up with a means to keep yourself honest (check list of parts or something like that).. And stick with it.
Look around, look at the top 5 or 10 from each coast in the drags competition... They didnt get there by arbitrarily slapping parts on their cars (well maybe some did, but the top top few didnt). Everyone's guilty this, myself included(hey.. cool.. ipd's cam will take 1.2 seconds off my 0-60 time! $200 I should have never spent). The only time you're really and truely on your own is if you're doing something no one else has done or talked about(i.e. the high compression turbo, things like that), where you can't really predict exactly how things are going to work out. I don't really talk about the "f+t" project a lot, but I literally spent 6+ months looking around, asking questions (to volvo and non volvo people alike), measuring, speculating, etc, but there was a learning curve there after we got it on the road.
Question everything, don't just accept something as law because one or two (or 20 :roll: ) people say something.. try and think about why they would say what they did. If they've had hands on experience, it might pay to listen. If they're merely speculating, consider it, think about it, but dont accept it as gospel. Remeber, its *your* car, not theirs, so you ultimately need to make the choice and ya oughta know why you made the choice you did. I chose to go the high compression turbo route based on roto re me's experience and success with his nissan, and the fact that I had a spare turbo setup out of a car with a hosed cylinder head made it all that much easier. If I had listened to the people on the turbobricks mailing list and more so the people on the brickboard, there would be no high compression turbo. Does that make me a badass for doing it? No. I didn't do it alone, I had a lot of help from several people. What something will do for your public status shouldn't be part of your decision making process.
And keep in mind, the mechanical aspect of a project normally doesnt even account for half of the total time invested, realistically its going to be a very small portion of time, so when you're laying out your plans keep that in mind. The reason I laid down the time I did in my car with the stuff i've got isnt because of an inheirant greatness surounding my motor, or because I'm a god at megasquirt (i'm not, actually i kinda suck at tuning my car hahaha) Its because me and roto re me have hundreds and hundreds of hours in the tuning and tinkering. So keep that in mind.
Question everything down to the small parts. The best projects have the most time invested in planning