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Boosting your stock motor means you can double your horsepower
Taking a car that engineers have spent thousands of hours getting right, and then strapping on a turbocharger or supercharger and attempting to double the factory horsepower, sounds like a great way to waste thousands of dollars dealing with busted engines. However, as many have already proven, you can radically improve a car's power output without driving over your own crankshaft. After deciding to sample BRZ/86 life, MOOG wasn't blown away by the Toyota/Subaru coupe's performance as a stock car. He fixed that last week when he fitted an SME turbo kit (watch the episode HERE) and a Gen II Garrett turbocharger to the...
Workshop Manuel explains - why are the fastest car mid-engined?
Ferrari, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Koenigsegg, McLaren and countless other supercar and hypercar manufacturers have copied one basic design trend when building their mind-bogglingly fast cars: they stick the engine behind the driver. But, when most cars leave the engine up front, why would you move it? Marty discovered how well mid-engined cars handle when he built up his Toyota MR2 for the $10,000 MR Battle. While the 90s JDM legend wasn't great to work on its handling was next-level, even for a bloke used to Subaru all-wheel-drive grip. The reason behind MR being used in gun go-fast cars is twofold: packaging and weight...
History of the choo-choo - the first turbo production cars were deathtraps
Turbo cars are maaaad, and that's a fact. MOOG has taken his slow-but-sporty BRZ and made it a beaut street car with the addition of the Gen2 Garrett GTX2864 turbocharger bolted to the SME kit he fitted IN THE LATEST EPISODE. However, while turbos are everywhere today that wasn't the case in the Back In The Day Times of yesteryear. Settle in with a hot cup of Milo, kids, as Uncle Workshop Manuel takes you back to the scary days before turbochargers were everywhere and everyone knew how rad they are. Turbochargers, or turbosuperchargers as they used to be known, were...
Workshop Manuel explains: sorting out why your bolts won't thread, and your nuts are stuffed
Have you ever been working on your car and gone to fit a part, only to discover you can't do up a bolt or a nut won't thread onto your car? You're probably trying to put the wrong format fastener into play, which is like trying to speak a foreign language to a deaf person at the Drive-Thru. Car-based fasteners are generally sized referring to the diameter of the thread, and the thread count (also referred to as “pitch”). The pitch is – roughly – the shape and spacing of the threads, which affects how they tighten down. But there are...
Gripping Stuff - the ins and outs of clutches
If your mad nugget has a manual transmission and you're planning on owning it for a while, then you're probably going to have to change the clutch at some point, just like Moog did in the latest episode HERE. But what is a clutch, how does it work, what upgrades can you do, and why does Moog put fish sauce on his ice cream? I'll aim to answer most of those questions below! Basically a clutch is a mechanical linkage that transfers the power of your engine to the wheels, and is made up of three basic parts: the flywheel, the...