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How BAM BAM makes cars faster
If you've seen the LATEST EPISODE (get your BAM and also more BAM here) then you'll see the box of wonder, sparks and flames the boys fitted to MOOG's museum-spec 180SX. But, why do people froth on cars banging out the exhaust and popping flames? Basically, it all goes back to motorsport from 40 years ago... The wondrous, flame-belching technology referred to as BAM BAM is actually colloquially known as anti-lag, and came from top-shelf Formula One, sports car, and World Rally Championship motorsport. In the 1980s, back in the early days of turbocharged race cars, engines typically had low compression ratios...
Oil temperature is crucial to good engine health
Why do so many tuner and race cars run oil coolers? Because oil temperature is one of the most important aspects to keeping your engine running. Literally. Extreme oil temperatures drastically shortens the life of the bearings which keep your engine spinning, for a variety of reasons. Firstly, the temperature of oil affects its viscosity (AKA, the oil's slipperiness) which is why oil has numbers like 0w-30, 5w-40, and the like. These numbers refer to how viscous the oil is when cold and what the upper temperature range is. When oil gets hotter than its peak operating temperature it starts to thin out....
All the Haltech parts we used to get the Kei Truck running (with wiring diagrams!)
Which cars will be future classics?
Since the term was first coined way back in the 1970s, car enthusiasts have debated what automobiles will be considered classics by future generations. Some cars (like Ferrari's 250 GTO and the McLaren F1) are raised to that level from the moment they're released, while others take enthusiasts by surprise. Few expected to see Nissan's cheap and cheerful 180SX/200SX/Silvia sports coupes quadruple in price in a few short years, let alone watching R34 GT-Rs surpass many modern Ferraris in value! For this story I'm going to pick a bunch of cars from the last 5 years and use my 20 year's...
Is the BMW M50B25 a 1JZ we didn't know about?
It shouldn't come as a surprise that prices of our hero cars from the 1990s have sky-rocketed as the era of Hypercolor, rap-rock, and CD-ROMs was more than two whole decades past. This has meant prices for some of our favourite engines has also risen sharply, making engine swaps a spicier burrito to unwrap today. Years ago it seemed we Australians were swimming in an unending supply of Japanese performance motors, ready and stocked at import yards as complete engine packages or full front-cuts, which we could verily yeet into all manner of many and varied nuggets. But today those...