When tuning goes horribly, horribly wrong
Speaking of Mitsubishi Lancers, I would be remiss if I didn't point Car Lust readers to this epic thread at LancerRegister.com.
It starts off a bit slow, but quickly picks up steam, as a well-meaning "tuner" wreaks havoc on an poor, innocent second-gen Mitsubishi Eclipse with a misused file, some dodgy welding, some badly cut diamond plate, and gallons upon gallons of non-strategically applied metallic blue paint. I'm mechanically inept, but when I saw the pictures of the guy filing grooves into the head even I knew something was horribly awry. It just goes downhill from there. Keep a special eye out for the lunched turbocharger and potentially fatal clutch and flywheel modifications.
The video below catches the poor, cringing Eclipse putting on a very expensive fireworks show.
Like any train wreck, this is engrossing stuff, and it has captured the imagination of car lovers everywhere--the thread has more than a million page views and 46 pages of posts as I write this. Thanks for the heads-up go to reader Caddy Jeff, who submitted the Fedora Award winner in the $25,000 Challenge.
--Chris H.
Mochi Mochi on October 17, 2008 at 12:41 PM
what this car needs is more blue paint.
The hand cut "sin grooves" in the "polished head" should really help. I'm sure the clutch will stop slipping once the the hand grinder finishes cutting those traction groves... ?!?! my head was spinning like a scene from the exorcist.
There's a lesson here. Be VERY careful of the tuner car you decide to buy off of craigslist. It may look harmless but you could have "sin grooves" in your cylinder head and never even know it.
Cookie the Dog's Owner on October 17, 2008 at 01:39 PM
Are those "sin grooves" as in the following:
"It's a serious sin to file grooves in a cylinder head like that; see your parish priest immediately and remember to fully perform all assigned acts of penance."
Smoke_Jaguar4 on October 17, 2008 at 02:31 PM
Oh. My. God...
For all the 'work' he's done on this car, I doubt it will even start. Even if it managed to turn over, I'd give a couple of seconds before it would simultaneously seize and detonate.
Caddy Jeff on October 17, 2008 at 03:18 PM
Actually, believe it or not, it runs, and they had it driving at a track (gotta look around youtube, there may be a link now on the thread but 40+ pages takes some time to gobble through...
Rob the SVX guy on October 17, 2008 at 10:07 PM
You know, I saw this on a Subaru forum, and believe it or not I've seen those file marks on a lot of motorcycle heads. Do I think it could help a modern computer designed head? No. Do I think it probably helps older heads? Sure, I guess, why else would lots of motorcycles use it?
Hucbald on October 20, 2008 at 04:28 PM
Sorry, I found that epically underwhelming. I was expecting, you know, explosions and stuff. Now, when I replaced the stock exhaust on my Y2K BMW K1200LT with a Staintune K1200RS header mated to a Thrush glasspack to save weight, THAT was epic. Epically loud: I had a sedate touring bike that sounded more bad-a$$ and big-bore than ANY sportbike. Redneck tech is an art form. Not everybody can do it.
Chris Hafner on October 20, 2008 at 04:30 PM
My interest in that thread was more about all the awful, awful decisions that were made and less about the car melting down. I'm actually pleased the results weren't more cataclysmic - with the way the clutch and flywheel were modified, the major failures we'd be likely to see could well be fatal to the driver. That thread has several stories about the kind of havoc a disintegrating clutch can wreak.
Mochi Mochi on October 20, 2008 at 05:20 PM
i don't think there are any serious motorcycles that use "sin grooves". there's all kinds of urban myths out there, and a lot of them in the "tuning" world. i'm guessing that "sin grooves" are one of them. if they do anything, its create hot spots and possible pinging problems. the likelihood that they improve performance on any machine is highly questionable. anyone who says so is probably convinced of it before hand and not going through strict test procedures to actually verify their effectiveness.
oh and anyone who thinks that motorcycle engines haven't been at the forefront of combustion chamber design for many years in advance of your average or high end car, does not know motorcycle engine design. bikes have been cranking out much more power per cubic inch than cars for decades. the reason for this is that the horsepower race that got terminated with the death of the muscle car in the 70s never stopped in the superbike world. Honda eventually put vtec in their cars, almost a decade after it was introduced on the CBR400 in 1983 and known as HYPER VTEC. Computer modeling and refinement of everything from valve design to combustion chamber shape, intake and exhaust resonance design has been happening in the bike world way in advance of cars.
if sin grooves worked they would have been designed into motorcycle heads back in the early 80s and we'd have them in all our cars right now.
think about the name... i think that says it all. the mistaken belief that you can put some kind of mark on a machine and make it "badd".
Rob the SVX guy on October 20, 2008 at 08:39 PM
Again, I'm not saying they'd help a computer designed head, but from my days of being a Jawa enthusiast (weird czech bikes from the 50s, 60s, and 70s), there were a LOT of success stories and explanations as to why these grooves helped those old heads. >shrug<
Keith_Indy on October 21, 2008 at 06:43 AM
One of the goals of porting and combustion chamber work is to smooth the edges, not great sharp points. Sharp edges hold heat.
And what's with all the back firing.
Rob the SVX guy on October 21, 2008 at 10:13 AM
True. Maybe those sharp edges advanced the timing a bit? Who knows. All I know is that people with OLD bikes tended to see some improvement.
DensityDuck on October 21, 2008 at 10:51 PM
I put sin grooves in my head, it helps to spiralise the water in the cooling system. This aligns the magnetic particles in the block to ensure proper gas flow. I've also added niobium-tantalum jackets to all cables, to ensure that harmful "parasitic" radio waves from cell-phones and high-tension lines don't introduce transient signals that affect valve timing. (You can really hear the difference after these are installed, the engine runs much smoother and 'rounder' than before!) Finally I added four additional batteries in the trunk and modified the starter to operate on a pushbutton--I call it "hybrid nitro", it gives me a HP boost in an environmentally-friendly way!
(no, I did not actually do any of this.)