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My car gave up on me
16 years ago
General
Ok.. An actual journal entry! It's a miracle. I know right?
Well... Here's the thing. I Race an old car. A 1984 Lancer EX SL to be exact... It's a 1.4L little bugger that became the center of my time since it got out of the paint shop. Most of the Mods were done/installed DIY style. I even tuned the Weber carburetor myself. This was a big mistake.
It all started when I tuned my Carb for the stock engine. It ran good. It was geared towards lean, but not dangerously lean. (For those who might not know, Lean means too little gas, Rich means too much gas. Being too lean is dangerous since gasoline also acts as a coolant for the engine... Too little and boom!) Then I got a better camshaft (an engine mod) for it from a friend. We put it in DIY style form 11pm-5am in the morning. Using the same carburetor tuning, I drove the car around the block. Parked the car and checked the spark plugs. "Good!" I said to myself. The spark plugs are telling me that I need not re tune the carburetor to match the new mod. Strangely, my water temperature is higher than regular... I Shrugged it off since it was still far from the danger zone.
Then... 2 weeks ago... My school's car club rented a parking lot somewhere outside our city. We planned to just have fun, do a simple autocross track and run around like a maniac! We even had fun on the way there!
I did a sustained top speed run - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvZtKIrgubw
I raced with our Accord buddy - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZroMLePWaE
Drifted (fine! Doughnuts... Sorry, I has no LSD!!) with crappy tires - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cAF2CXDTQM
And ran autocross - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMTM0ppB_yI
The thing was, towards noon, my engine sprung an air leak on the 3rd and 4th cylinders! Crap! So I removed the carb and put it back on thinking that the intake sealing was the problem.... I resealed everything and behold! The leak was still there O_O... I was dumbfounded... So I had no choice but to retire the Lancer half way into the day. Luckily, on the way home, it fixed itself.... I know... WTF!?
I got a change oil and replaced all the spark plugs a few days after the event... To my horror, when a buddy of my requested to see my spark plugs 3 days later for no real reason at all, I discovered that I was running SUPER lean... As in, to the car guys out there, the spark plugs were completely white O_O. This meant that my previous spark plugs weren't reading right O_O. I made my engine go through all that while being dangerously lean!!! Crap! Then a few days later... Something gave underneath the engine. I would describe it as, put a coin in a can and shake it violently. Soooo.... I dubbed my engine dying... It's now here in our garage collecting dust.
My engine could still be repaired, but I thought to myself, "Is it worth the effort and money? It's just going to break again since it's been tuned by an amateur. It's a 1.4L too.... No much power there no matter what I do..." So I decided... It's time for an engine swap! A 4G63, 2.0L DOHC non turbo engine, swap to be precise! I'm currently looking for an engine to put in my little box :D. Can't wait for it to come out a few months from now :). It'll be another headache since we'd be reconfiguring a FWD engine into a RWD T_T...
Hope I get lucky!
Well... Here's the thing. I Race an old car. A 1984 Lancer EX SL to be exact... It's a 1.4L little bugger that became the center of my time since it got out of the paint shop. Most of the Mods were done/installed DIY style. I even tuned the Weber carburetor myself. This was a big mistake.
It all started when I tuned my Carb for the stock engine. It ran good. It was geared towards lean, but not dangerously lean. (For those who might not know, Lean means too little gas, Rich means too much gas. Being too lean is dangerous since gasoline also acts as a coolant for the engine... Too little and boom!) Then I got a better camshaft (an engine mod) for it from a friend. We put it in DIY style form 11pm-5am in the morning. Using the same carburetor tuning, I drove the car around the block. Parked the car and checked the spark plugs. "Good!" I said to myself. The spark plugs are telling me that I need not re tune the carburetor to match the new mod. Strangely, my water temperature is higher than regular... I Shrugged it off since it was still far from the danger zone.
Then... 2 weeks ago... My school's car club rented a parking lot somewhere outside our city. We planned to just have fun, do a simple autocross track and run around like a maniac! We even had fun on the way there!
I did a sustained top speed run - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvZtKIrgubw
I raced with our Accord buddy - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZroMLePWaE
Drifted (fine! Doughnuts... Sorry, I has no LSD!!) with crappy tires - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cAF2CXDTQM
And ran autocross - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMTM0ppB_yI
The thing was, towards noon, my engine sprung an air leak on the 3rd and 4th cylinders! Crap! So I removed the carb and put it back on thinking that the intake sealing was the problem.... I resealed everything and behold! The leak was still there O_O... I was dumbfounded... So I had no choice but to retire the Lancer half way into the day. Luckily, on the way home, it fixed itself.... I know... WTF!?
I got a change oil and replaced all the spark plugs a few days after the event... To my horror, when a buddy of my requested to see my spark plugs 3 days later for no real reason at all, I discovered that I was running SUPER lean... As in, to the car guys out there, the spark plugs were completely white O_O. This meant that my previous spark plugs weren't reading right O_O. I made my engine go through all that while being dangerously lean!!! Crap! Then a few days later... Something gave underneath the engine. I would describe it as, put a coin in a can and shake it violently. Soooo.... I dubbed my engine dying... It's now here in our garage collecting dust.
My engine could still be repaired, but I thought to myself, "Is it worth the effort and money? It's just going to break again since it's been tuned by an amateur. It's a 1.4L too.... No much power there no matter what I do..." So I decided... It's time for an engine swap! A 4G63, 2.0L DOHC non turbo engine, swap to be precise! I'm currently looking for an engine to put in my little box :D. Can't wait for it to come out a few months from now :). It'll be another headache since we'd be reconfiguring a FWD engine into a RWD T_T...
Hope I get lucky!
M50 it.
It's a BMW thing. Seems like whenever a BMW owner is considering an engine swap, all the BMWCC members just unhelpfully advise them to "M50 it, mate."