- Cars off the road more often than they're on it
These are the kind of problems that regularly shoot down petty well all high-power modified streetcars. And unfortunately it's a phenomena that's growing, thanks to the widespread and increasing belief that a streeter has to run at least a 12-second ET to gain any cred. If your platform is a car that ran factory high thirteens you'll get away with it; but modify a car that did the quarter pass in the sixteens and I can guarantee you're gonna have major, expensive and on-going reliability problems.
And that's a story told by very few workshops eager to modify your car....
Recently, I've seen more and more examples where people have taken their car well beyond its intrinsic design limitations. That's fine - but only if the owner realises that when components are pushed too far, they'll end up with a car that lunches something major maybe every couple of months. Any car - from front to back - is designed to withstand only a certain amount of stress. A crankshaft will only handle so much, gearbox housings will flex and move when engine torque is massively increased, and production car driveline components are far from unbreakable. So if you decide to double (or more than double!) the power being developed - as is now in vogue - you can bet that there will be associated mechanical carnage.
Here are some real-life examples.
I know of one street-driven vehicle that's recently run some blistering quarter mile numbers. That's great - but, the trouble is, it's already been rolled back into the workshop for considerable top-end repairs. And that's just three weeks after its "completion". Of course, the poor owner has already invested a very sizeable amount of money in the build-up and now the car's again off the road for several weeks, requiring another few thousand dollars to make it fire up again. Not long before this episode, I watched another fairly heavily leant-on street engine drop its lunch during a controlled dyno run. This photo illustrates just part of the damage that occurred. I've recently also learnt that one of the many fast Melbourne-based Commodore VL Turbos is now in the process of being completely rebuilt. Why? It was noticed that the body's chassis rails had started to crack under the strains of the stove-hot boosted RB30... Lucky somebody picked that one up!
A Solution?
Why not simply use stronger parts - that'll stop the breakages won't it? Unfortunately, the more aftermarket parts included in a build-up, often the more a car's overall reliability is jeopardised. It makes sense that if a factory component is being so heavily stressed that its failure is immediate, it needs to be replaced. But it's pretty damn likely that its replacement won't have been developed to the same standards of reliability and engineering as the original manufacturer specified - resulting in the weird situation that the aftermarket (supposedly better) component can in the real world have less reliability than the apparently weaker original equipment. Why is that? Because there are very, very few aftermarket suppliers that invest anything like the money in the product's development that the original equipment supplier will have. That's one reason why swapping in original equipment gear from another more powerful car works so well. The stuff has been developed to OE standards.
There are also other dangers in moving away from factory components. Will installing an extra heavy-duty aftermarket clutch have negative effects on the rest of the stock driveline? You bet. Can slotting in a big camshaft cause problems with stock valve springs? Yep. Every major engine modification you make will put strain on something else. And if you're treading a path where no one has gone before, it's pretty likely that you'll be the "guinea pig" for the workshop's development program. You see, if your trusted workshop hasn't had experience in meeting your requirements, it's you who'll be paying for them to learn.... on your car! So if something goes wrong, you'll get the bill.
Now don't get me wrong; I'm all for acceleration G-forces and wickedly high speeds - but many of the fast-number cars that we drool over are not cars we'd find pleasure in owning. Why? Because when these vehicles are used on a semi-regular basis, they almost always break. And that invariably costs the earth...
So what's the solution? The only practical way to prevent repeated mechanical breakage (and the accompanying financial out-pouring) is to keep engine mods to a relative minimum. That sees only mild increases in stresses across the board - crank, rods, clutch, gearbox, diff and chassis.
But does this mean that we should all stick to lame-arse slow cars? No way! To overcome a lot of these problems it makes sense to buy the fastest, newest car that you can afford - and then just tweak it for reliable but still very effective results. The practice of buying a cheap, modest performance car and doing it up is fine - but it's important to recognize when to stop pulling more power. When you're repeatedly cracking windscreens due to chassis flex and you find that the car is off the road more often than not, you know you've reached the limitations of that vehicle. And once things are at that stage, it's a smart idea to trade up to a vehicle from a higher performance category. That way, it's the car manufacturer that's gone through the hassle and expense of ensuring that everything is up to the task.
It's often overlooked that mild mods to a car from a higher performance category will see you running about as fast as you would have in a highly modified cheapie - but with vastly improved reliability. Yes, a high-performance car will require more capital investment, but less frequent fixing of broken bits will help offset this. Add to that a fuel consumption figure that's invariably lower than a heavily modified car, and the enjoyment that you'll get from other things such as bigger brakes, better instrumentation, and more supportive seats, and it starts to look an open-and-shut case.
Okay, so what happens when you - almost inevitably - want to go even faster again? Wanting more performance than you get from (say) a mildly modified WRX or 5.7 Commodore is pretty tough without spending really huge money - which is another way of saying how good these vehicles already are. Sure, you can always fit a monster turbo (supercharger in the case of the Holden), programmable management and all the rest. You will go faster - but you'll also be getting a car unarguably not-so street friendly or reliable.
I suppose the big question is: do you want a fast streetcar, or a halfway drag car that you can't rely on for everyday transport? In my experience of writing about hundreds of stove-hot cars, it's nearly impossible to have both.
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