Thought of the Day: Messing With Perfection
As a VW owner and enthusiast, I am familiar with the concept of improving a car through aftermarket modifications. There is quite a large percentage of Volkswagens on the road with at least something done to them. It’s because VW’s (and of course, Audis) respond particularly well to small modifications. I’m sure this is largely due to the ubiquitous 1.8L 20-valve Turbo engine (commonly known as the One-Eight Tee. Natch.)
Three simple changes turn the 1.8T from a smooth, well-balanced, adequte but somewhat boring motor into something of a monster. It’s a well known process: get the ECU reprogrammed, replace the diverter valve with one that can withstand a lot of boost and reacts quickly, and put on a 3″ downpipe to free up some flow for quicker spool. These mods bump the boost up from about 9psi to anywhere from 20 to 24 psi, depending on which chip you go with. Power also jumps from 150-180 (depending on year and model) to 190-220. More gains are pretty easy on the stock turbo with other bolt-ons. an adjustable or fixed 3-4bar Fuel Pressure Regulator helps with delivery. Then you run into heat retention problems, which can be cured by fitting a larger intercooler or a water/methanol injection system - so you can have that delicious boost all day long, even in high-heat, high-load conditions. Beyond that, a larger Borg-Warner K04-series turbo (from the high-output 1.8T as well as the Audi RS4) is, in many cases, a direct bolt-on to the stock manifold - which can bring you near 300 wheel horsepower. Of course, the stock clutch is crap - so the one from VR6-equipped models will do nicely, as will the lightweight flywheel from the older supercharged G60 models.
Beyond that, larger turbos than the relatively small K04 are a possibility. T3/T4 hybrids, Mitsubishi TD04’s, Garrett GT-series ball bearing turbos (I’ve seen everything from GT25’s up to GT35’s on 1.8T’s.) Big injectors, forged connecting rods, big-valve heads from early production A4’s, Schrick cams… the aftermarket has no end. Don’t like the way the car handles? You can’t throw a stick without hitting one of the numerous coil-over suspension setups available for all sorts of VW’s. Brakes not up to the task? Bolt on some six-piston calipers and huge ventilated rotors from the Cayenne Turbo.
You get the point. And obviously, it’s not just VW’s. Some cars are popular just because of the fantastic aftermarket support they enjoy. How about mid-ninties Honda Civics? Sure, there are a lot of questionably modified Civics running around with awful sounding buzzbox exhausts, clear taillights and heated coils. There are also stock-looking beat up hatchbacks stuffed full of deliciously, nasty motors. For one thing, Civics have the perfect counterpart parts car. It’s got the same double-wishbone suspension, and bigger versions of the fantastic B-series motor - as well as bigger brakes, better seats, etc etc. It’s called the Integra. Then there are companies like DC Sport, Hasport, Neuspeed, and Jackson Racing that have made a fortune developing well-engineered power solutions for Hondas. Do you think Civics would be as popular as they are if you couldn’t built up a nasty, reliable motor from mail-order parts and shove it in your EG hatch over a weekend? (For the record, I’m going to say the perfect Honda motor - besides a turbocharged C32B from the NSX - would be a K24 block from an Accord or CR-V, a K20C head from an Si or RSX-S, a Hondata ECU and a Jackson Racing M45 positive displacement blower.)
Same thing goes for Fox-body Mustangs. To be honest, a stock Fox-body Mustang (that’s a 79-93, but for all purposes the only decent ones were 88-93) is a pretty damn awful car in every way imaginable (1993 SVT Cobra excluded.) But you can get a Fox body with a 302 and 5-speed for a grand, and put another 3 grand in basic engine, suspension and structure modifications, and have a RIDICULOUSLY fast car for almost no money.
Also the same for DSM’s. For those not in the know, DSM stands for Diamond-Star Motors, which was a tie-up between Mitsubishi Motors and Chrysler from the late eighties to the mid ninties. The only really significant product was the first and second-generation Eclipse/Talon/Laser (Mitsubishi/Eagle/Plymouth, respectively.) These were cheap, attractive sports coupes that simply dominated the segment backin the day. They were available with a bunch of engines - a 1.8L single-cam that no one cares about, a 2.0L twin-cam, and a 2.0L twin-cam turbo that is simply referred to as the 4G63. The 4G made between 190 and 210 horsepower depending on year, model, drivetrain and transmission. People have been extracting obscene amounts of power from this fairly basic iron-block 16v fourbanger for going on two decades now, with relative predictability.
There are tons more examples, of course. Many cars benefit easily from some aftermarket fettling. The Toyota Supra and MR2 Turbo, of course. GM F-Bodies (Firebird/Camaro/Etc.) with the LT1 or LS1 V8. Subaru’s fantastic WRX. The modern DSM, the Lancer Evolution.
I suppose the point here is that there are many cars which come out of the factory pretty good, but there is definite “room for improvement.” This is because, at their core, any car built to a price point has compromises. A company wants to sell as many cars as they can, so they try to make them appeal to as many people as possible. This is logical and quite obvious. Of course you can make your VW handle better - VW designed the suspension to provide a compromise between road-hugging handling, and a squishy ride for all the stupid sorority girls that drive them. Of course you can get a lot more power out of your SRT-4 - Dodge engineered the engine as a compromise between power and emission control and driveability, etc. It’s all about what’s important to you.
So I’m obviously not that obnoxious old person who says “you should just drive the car, it’s fine as it is!” While that’s basically true, if you can make something better, why would you not? A well-sorted modified car compared to a stock car is roughy analagous to the first and final drafts of your thesis paper.
But sometimes, people just don’t know when to leave well enough alone. Sometimes, cars are modified just for the sake of change. It seems to me that people occasionally lose the concept of the difference between “changes” and “improvements.” Perhaps my favorite example of this phenomenon is the German tuning company Novitec.
Novitec, believe it or not, modifies Ferrari’s. And I don’t just mean “a set of wheels and some branded springs.” Novitec sells twin-supercharger setups for the 360 Modena and F430 that more than double the stock output. Of a Ferrari. MORE THAN DOUBLE IT. So I’m going to go ahead and say something here you may never hear me say again in my natural born life: 800 horsepower in a Ferrari is overkill. It’s too much.
There is a difference between doubling the output of an SRT-4 (to 460 horsepower) and doubling the power of a 360 Moden (that would be just shy of 800.) A 360 Modena is already obscenely fast. It’s already ridiculous. A stock, F1 Sequential-equipped 360 Modena can blast to sixty miles an hour in less than four seconds. Ok, now double that power output. Not that I’m speaking from experience (let’s be honest here - raise your hand if you’ve driven a twin-supercharged Ferrari lately, seriously) but I imagine this turns the 360 from a sweet-handling, well-balanced performance car into two and a half handfuls of “oh my god.” Which is basically the same experience you’d get from strapping a supercharger on a 302-powered Mustang. I’d also imagine that Ferrari’s high-compression, high-winding flat plane crank V8 won’t survive that long under a ton of boost. To be very honest, it strikes me as a bad idea.
In fact, the Novitec Ferrari’s are the exception to the rule. The rule being: modifications of an exotic car usually don’t yield tangible results. Hamann’s performance package for the Gallardo (A modified ECU, stainless steel low-restriction exhaust, and high-flow catalysts) only nets an additional 40 horsepower… at massive expense.
Even just modifying exotic engines is usually a bad idea. The F20C in Honda’s S2000 roadster already makes 240 horsepower out of 2.0L of displacement (that’s 120bhp/l for the math challenged.) The only way to really get any more power out of one is a supercharger, gains are not that impressive, and the durability of many other components is stretched thin.
Let me throw something at you: surely by now you are familiar with the high-output Speed versions of the Bentley Continental line? Some rather extensive modifications increase the output of the biturbo W12 from 552 horsepower up to 604. But do you know why? It’s because these “new-age” Bentley owners were demanding more power from their stock GT’s, and were getting their ECU’s modified to supply significantly more boost. And then they were blowing up. Can you imagine how much a Bentley 6.0 W12 Biturbo crate motor costs?
The most offensive to me, though, are body kits on prestige cars. There are plenty of brand-new or nearly-new high-end Benzes running around Raleigh with just absolutely rice-tastic body kits stuck on them. i’m sure they’re made of high-quality polyeurothane, but they just look awful. Here’s an example of a visually modified Benz:
And not to sound like a snob (although I’m sure that’s how this will come out), but don’t you think it’s at least a BIT presumptuous to think you can improve on the engineering work that was done by Mercedes Benz? Honestly, it’s sort of their thing. Do you think that Lorinser bodykit improves upon the aerodynamic balance created by Mercedes Benz through probably thousands of hours in a wind tunnel? Or do you think that if Lamborghini intended for the redline to be 500 rpm higher on the Gallardo, that they just chose not to?
I see it like this: cheaper cars respond to modifications relatively well, because they’re designed to a price point. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the reason that so many people ugrade the diverter valve on their1.8T isn’t because it’s fun, it’s because the stock one is an awful, cheaply made and poorly designed piece of crap. Clutches on S2000’s aren’t for looks, they’re because the stock clutch is so bad that it’s gone by the third or fourth hard launch.
Whereas, do you really think they cut corners putting together the engine on your Gallardo? For god’s sake, it’s a V10 of more than 5.0L of displacement - but well designed, and built with tight enough tolerances and good enough balance to spin well north of 8,000 rpms. It already makes an astronomical amount of power for it’s dislacement, sounds glorious, and has near instantaneous throttle response. What’s a chip going to fix, here?
I guess the point here is that some people need to know when to stop. I’d say anything more expensive or fancy than an M3 should be off limits for modifications. But that’s just me.
-James