Modding Screw-ups

[royale]

V Funny story of a dude that modded his rex, f@cked it, then returned it to stock to claim warranty fixes.

Linky (http://www.i-club.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=9739&perpage=15&pagenumber=1)

Anyone got any good modding f@ck up stories they want to share?

[Salted_Chipmunk]

I wrote a reply to a forum once and some f*cker deleted it .......

:D

[slaine1]

Did you see what those bastards did?

They reported him to Subaru America.

The justification? Maybe it'll be easier to claim on warranty if everyone was honest. As if Subie America is _ever_ going to make it easier for anyone to claim warranty regardless of how honest the customers are.

Now, I don't agree with what the idiot who blew up his engine did, but what the forum members did was equally bad, if not worse.

[royale]

What those 'bastards' did was fucken great. The dumb shit got what he deserved.

:D :D :D :D

Nothing like a bit of karma for scumbags!
:D :banana: :D

[Asmodeus]

I got 5 letters for him P W N 3 D bahahahah

what a dumb ass abd wow, I guess teh only punctuation he knows in a bang!


Then again all these tunerlosers adn riceboys are morons to begin with.

[scathing]

I only read the first post.....

18psi with the stock bottom end, ECU, turbo and intercooler? What a fucking moron. It'd be hard to tell whether he blew a piston or the turbo from his description. Either's quite likely.

I'm surprised his engine lasted 6 months if he always feels the need to drag people off at the lights, and take it out on the strip. If he later reported a hole in one of his front guards that looked kinda piston-sized, it wouldn't surprise me ;)

The problem with making an "affordable supercar" is that, when you lower the barriers of entry, you let the bottom feeders in. The motor journos may love it, but the car gets a bad reputation with insurers and the public because retards decide to booscht it, bro.

[scathing]

I AM GETTIN RID OF THIS PEICE OF **** CAR, AND NEVER BUYIN A SUBARU AGAIN!

........and American Subaru owners across the entire breathe a sigh of relief.

[fuckitgolucky]

Originally posted by scathing
18psi with the stock bottom end, ECU, turbo and intercooler? What a fucking moron. It'd be hard to tell whether he blew a piston or the turbo from his description. Either's quite likely.


I feel sorry for this guy.. If you don't know much about cars and want your cars to go faster, you rely on the tuning shops to give you right info. It's like the dickheads at harvey norman who sell pentium 8's with 20 gigahert processors 29inch flat panel screens to grandma's who just want to play with the internet and get email because they don't know any better.. Whoever put the bits on the car for him should've told him it was going to pop. No compression in piston one.. Sounds like it detonated and cracked the piston (or worse)... Poor bastard.. He's just a stupid fuck for advertising the fact he was doing it on waranty.. As if there wouldn't be a suby person reading the thread... still it is pretty funny ..

[mrwest]

For all the people out there who say "Don't worry, it's just the internet...", this is a wicked example of how the internet can fuck you up if you're not careful. The net aint no computer game kids...

[scathing]

Originally posted by fuckitgolucky
I feel sorry for this guy.. If you don't know much about cars and want your cars to go faster, you rely on the tuning shops to give you right info.

True. He sounds like the kind of guy that writes into Hot4's (and for some reason they always publish letters like this) saying, "I just bought a <insert shitbox here>. It produces x kW at the flywheel. I've got $2000 to spend on mods, and I want to get 2x kW at the tyres. For insurance reasons, I don't want to put on a turbo. What should I do?"

I swear Hot4's always prints these articles because they just copy and paste "there's no way its possible at that price, or even at all if you want to keep the engine driveable", and they don't have to think.

It is true that an unscrupulous tuner who takes the money, buys a big cat-back and a boost controller, then winds the guy's car up to high heaven. The tuners realise that, if he says its not possible to do reliably, the guy will just go somewhere else. So he may as well be the one to make the profit, and the engine will stay together for long enough for the guy to drive away.

I mean, STi won't run more than about 15psi on their EJ20T's. That's with a new cooler, a slightly stronger bottom end, a different exhaust (that I know of, they might have a different turbo and other bits), and they'll actually tune the ECU.

Do I feel sorry for the guy? I don't know. Its tough, but then it was self inflicted. No-one is born knowing how to modify an engine. Everyone learns, some more than others.

If you're going to do something, you take the time to research and learn. Ask different sources. See how reliable they are about other things you do know if. If you personally know people who have done things that have worked, value their judgement over someone trying to sell you something.

That way, even if you don't know how to do it yourself, you know the difference between having something that's value for money, or a bomb that's just waiting to go off.

[Al]

He should've looked about more and got a bit more advice before doing that to his car.

I'd be more careful modding my $4000 bike. When I upgrade I'll definately get advice from more than one place!

[Fuzzy Dice]

what a spud. pwn3d is right - and he tried taking it to other dealerships afterwards... signed an affadavit saying he'd never modded his car. Subaru can do mean legal things to his rectum now.

[CrazyWang]

General Advice for Morons #2304: Do not publish acts of fraud committed by yourself on a public forum.

[skage]

Is there something about WRX's engines that stops you running more than 16psi or so? Because you can easily run up to 18 or 20psi on a Skyline with the factory ECU with no problems. You have to change the turbo because the factory one will crap itself after 14psi or so and probably have to upgrade the injectors, but I don't think he's a "total moron" for trying to run 18psi with a stock ECU. "A little ignorant" is perhaps what I'd say.

If the WRX's engine leans out rather than overfuelling at higher boost, then I'd just be inclined to say that the WRX ECU is a POS.

[Al]

From what I read it was a stock turbo. The limit is more like 16psi according to the general consensus.

Factory was about 14psi...

[DumHed]

Some skylines *can* run 18+psi of boost, but a well designed setup will make more power at less boost.

I've seen skylines that will ping with anthing more than 1psi over stock boost.

The stock ECU will also hit "fuel cut" at much more than 15psi if the rest of the intake / exhaust system is any good.

You can get 18psi with a turbo that's too small, and badly designed zorst / intake, but only at mid revs. Boost will tail off at high revs due to inefficient flow.

I know of a few Silvias making over 200kw at the wheels at 1 bar (14.7psi) because they're well set up, with the right combination of parts.

[scathing]

As far as I'm aware, your standard WRX runs around 7-8psi in stock form.

The STi runs around 11-12psi in Oz Spec (and given that US fuel isn't much better than ours, I doubt they're running the 14psi from Jap Spec either).

[DumHed]

I was under the impression that a standard rex ran about 12psi and an STI was 14...

They run more boost on smaller turbos than the Nissans, which is why they get a lot more "kick", but lack the smoothness of power delivery.

[scathing]

Originally posted by DumHed
They run more boost on smaller turbos than the Nissans, which is why they get a lot more "kick", but lack the smoothness of power delivery.

Fair enough. Also explains why it produces (marginally) more power than the same displacement turbomotor from Nissan.

The WRX I drove yesterday was smooth enough. There was a slightly more pronounced turbo rush than the stock 200SX I took for a test drive recently, but not so you'd notice.

What I did notice was how much more I had to row the baulky gearbox. I'm not sure if its because of the amount of resistance 4WD provides, or the gearing, or just the car being so lifeless sans boost, but I'd always be caught with a "dead" throttle while negotiating roundabouts / speed humps, and have to knock it back a gear (or two) that I wouldn't have bothered with otherwise.

[plext]

I think that these two images tell the tale rather well:
http://plext.users.btopenworld.com/img/skylinetorque.gif http://plext.users.btopenworld.com/img/curve.jpg
The first is the torque curve of the Skyline, the second speaks for itself :)

While neither of these could be described as flat, the Skyline is building up the torque much lower, while doing it in much more linear manner.

None of this would probably be an issue if the WRX box was not such a hideous thing to use. I swear that the linkages are manufactured from rubber. Baulky does not even begin to describe this vague, recalcitrant, ipediment to smooth motoring.

That car really needs a sequential manual shift. Perhaps then it would become fun rather than tiresome.

[DrDivad]

i was gonna say that he had a stock twurbo as well,

and yeah all the experts have come in with stuf i agree with, i.e. you can't jsut mod one bit and expect goodness, to do a proper job the entire system has to be well designed so that it's a coherent whole thing that produces power not all relying on one bit, i.e. cranking your twurbo to insane levels,

again i thought the boost on wrx was 11-12 with 14.5 for sti based on some knobs i know with 'em,



ALSO I might add, every car has it's strong and weakpoints nad especially modern ones, they have all come along some kind of line, like a history, so my poiint is that each car is designed differently so that each car has it's own unique purpose,

in my opinion, people like Nissan are concerned with style, image (debabetely due to some of their weird body shapes) and on track power, subaru has a rally history, so does toyota, honda is for cheap arses..so personally i think comparing WRX's to Skylines is like comparing lemons and orange,

wrx can make a mean rally machine, and for the record i've never seen or heard of a skyline or a silvia doing particularly well at rally.....again emphasising the point that each car does it's own thing, and yeah i know stuff liek Pergeout 206 and Ford Escort and similar will often beat the RX due to being lighter and a bit more nimble, but the point remains in tact i think

[DrDivad]

also, in terms of my experience,

as many know i drive a beat up Subaru Vortex Turbo, which if modded right can make a mean rally car (especially with 4WD) but anyways, the point is that engine doesn't deliver much power at all, 85KW from 1.8l turbo running 7psi, which is only 10Kw above the non-turbo version,

seems kinda suck, but it makes peak torque (200Nm) at 2500rpm, and it stays there and peak KW comes at 4400rpm, so it has a strange power curve that has nothing down low, suddenly leaps to maximum, stays there and then flattens out,

having said that, racing against a friends celica, 5th Gen, with 196Nm and 100Kw it would seem that he should win, and from the start he does, but hit boost and i shoot ahead and then lose it again once he gets ot higher gears where his power actually exists...

it is my understanding that the Celica GT-4 has a power urve that is a less exagerated version of this aforementioned vortex one, so you see it's made for a reason, not jsut an underpowered old turbo hunk of junk (which it sorta is :P)


jsut had been discussing this sort of thing with some cobras and felt like posting it

[royale]

Originally posted by scathing
As far as I'm aware, your standard WRX runs around 7-8psi in stock form.

The STi runs around 11-12psi in Oz Spec (and given that US fuel isn't much better than ours, I doubt they're running the 14psi from Jap Spec either).

Actually its a little more than that, from AVO article...

Take a look at the stock WRX dyno chart. Note how the boost peaks at around 14.5 PSI at 4000 RPM and then tapers off to about 9 PSI at 6500 RPM.

Article (http://210.15.220.239/html/subaru/info/subaru_info_005.html)

[scathing]

Originally posted by royale
Actually its a little more than that, from AVO article...

Yeah, its been corrected a couple of times :)

A 14psi boost to 18psi doesn't seem as bad.

[royale]

Originally posted by scathing
Yeah, its been corrected a couple of times :)

A 14psi boost to 18psi doesn't seem as bad.

My mistake forgot rule #1- read forum IN ENTIRETY, then respond
:(
Anyway, I think the point of this mod is that the WRX has pretty damn good power figures, because its nearer its limits (as a production car engine) than most. While there are plenty of things you can do to it to up the stats, induction pressure aint one that you can f@ck with too much without major engine works.