thats weird, I've got nothing but positive feed back in the threads that I started.

Posted By smartbomb on 11-24-2009 09:07 PM
I was looking at some of the threads that you good people started, its helping! Thank You!

I am also amazed at the hate that SCC and MotoIQ is getting. I am completely baffled at the hate, like SCC was all about ricers, SCC was all hondapunk ricers or all about putting stickers and parts on cars? Did any of these people even ever read SCC. I know SCC (and motoiq) was not always the best source of tightly constructed prose but I kinda thought that our slant was always set dead against this sort of thing, like painfully obvious...

Speaking not for a complete forum but for a small few from the Gassroots Motorsports Forum:

I was never "into" mainstream cars, I like the idea of using mainstream technology to make an odd duck into something different. SCC was never part of my subscription choices. I would however briefly thumb the mag at the newsstand and if there was one interesting (to me) article I would buy it.

To say my choices in projects were a little off is an understatement. I owned a nitrous fed Chevette, V8 Rangers, a supercharged 351W Ford Granada coupe, turbo 4, V6 and V8 Merkur XR4Tis, Turbo V6 Oldsmobile Starfire, Turbo V6 Mustang, Ford Tempo and Mercury Topaz, 1967 Datsun SPL311 Roadster, 1967.5 Datsun SRL311 Roadster SBC V8 (w/ 335/35r17 Viper Cup spec Michelin rears), 1972 Ford Courier with FD RX7 engine swap and MANY more... SCC had helpful tech but it wasn't really tailored to my needs.

My current project is The Bug of Love, a V8 powered New Beetle. There is an Audi TT at work that needs an engine that may be substituted for the Beetle, but still get the V8 (It's all about the funding). If and when that project pops off I will then look into another Miata project, the next one will be a twin turbo 4.2L Split Port Ford T5 equipped mongrel running as much tire as I can find for the 949Racing 6ULs

FWIW, I really like the writers and the board layout. I will stay around as long as I have access to the board.

The quality of writing (grammar-wise) on MotoIQ has improved a ton over the last two months, so I don't think that's it.  But at the risk of sounding like a hater, my main disappointments now comes primarily from two sources:

1) The lack of diversity in project cars.  15 project cars should be enough to give a nice nod to most factions of your readership, but that's harder to do when 7 of them are Nissan and 3 of them are EVOs.  Obviously the staff tends to gravitate to the cars they themselves like (and why not when they're financing it).  But for a FR guy like me, the two project cars I really relate to rarely get much attention (300ZX and Silvia).

2) The somewhat cookie-cutterish form most project car articles are starting to take.  Basically a) buy car b) throw parts at it c) WPC treat anything possible (explaining yet again what WPC treatment is).

Even still, you don't need to buy new project cars to write articles I find interesting or useful.  Just make more of an effort to ensure that much of the content is universal.  Example:

The good articles take a part for a project car, and explain its choice based on the function it provides -- and then go further and explain how to tune that part to best suit your needs.  The Acura NSX LSD article comes to mind...

The "bad" articles take a part for a project car, and explain that its choice is based on the recommendation of someone to whom the author deferred, and then go on to another part and repeat the above...

If I don't own the car being used in the "bad" article, I'm not going to get much of anything out of it.  But I can get plenty out of articles like the NSX LSD one.  Teach us how to build "well sorted" synergetic project cars, rather than magazine cars with a laundry list of individual parts.

Other suggestions:

Buy a Vbox and give us some before/after numbers so we can see how much "handling has greatly improved"

Article idea:  take a car that's just had parts thrown at it, go to the track, then adjust the settings throughout the day (telling us why you adjusted what you did, how you would know if you went too far, etc) before giving us the improvement in lap time.

Well no shit! You are also preaching to the choir.  We would love to do all the things you are talking about  and are trying to grow to where we can do that.

The main reasons why we haven't done track evaluations is that we can't afford it.  The same reasons why the magazines don't either.  Well the magazines don't have the ability or the driver skill to do it for the most part as well. We have a GPS based data acquisition system so when we can we can do tests like that.  To rent a track for a day costs around $3000 when you include insurance and EMS.  Once we get some money coming in for sure we will do it but currently we can't.  Before and after testing of chassis mods can get exceptionally expensive due to this.

Its one of the things I envy about GRM, is that they often do this.  They have some nice available, close and cheap to rent evaluation areas.

We are well aware of the excess of Nissan project cars but for some reason, most of us own Nissans. Also you are stuck with the cars we can come up with for project cars because thats what we have access to and what we can afford.  There is no one paying the bill around here but us.  We have to carefully screen our project car owners as we have had trouble with them disappearing before with thousands of dollars of our parts.  One guy was even selling our parts on EBAY and pocketing the money.  In the near future we are going to add a S2000 project car, a CRX and an FD.

As far as which car gets the attention, it all depends on what we have money or time for.  You have to realize we are two full time people and about 8 part timers.  Its amazing that we get as much done as we do.  Its not like we have a whole staff of editors, mechanics and fabricators, copy editors, ad sales guys, art directors and photographers.  We are not a big corporation.  We still get more material out and do a better job of it than the big guys.

I would say that in most of our articles we write them just as you say.  There are plenty of technical reasons listed why we selected the parts, more I would say than in any other publication.  If we go by recommendation, it is a very good recommendation by highly qualified people.  If Billy Johnson or Eric Hsu likes some part or if Rob Fuller recommends something, it can usually be taken at face value.  I think, and everyone I have ever spoken to says we do it better than anyone in the industry.

As far as repeating things, one of the beauties of web publication is that we can reference and cross link things so the whole site acts like a body of information. So instead of repeating ourselves on the virtues of WPC, we just link to prior articles and the reader can delve into the details if they are curious for more info. As experienced engine builders we have used WPC extensively and use it on all of our own personal builds as do most of the highly qualified tuners we associate with such as Technosquare and XS Engineering.  We also track where our users go and we see that only a small minority of users read our whole site or even more than a few articles, even tracking back 4 months.  Thus we need to add references as it saves us from writing about the same thing over and over.  If we use a lot of certain components, a big reason is that we use stuff that works.  I am confident that our project cars will excel in performance and that they can out do the true cookie cutter project cars that other rags put out that use only parts gotten for free.  If we use a lot of KW, its because they make some of the best dampers for the money, same goes for Whiteline, Stoptech, Performance Friction and Volk wheels.  We don't currently take money from any of them although we would certainly like to see that change.

WPC is an awesome process, its why we use it alot  and they currently don't advertise with us.  We give them and ad to help them get established in this country.  We found out about WPC from Billy Johnson and his experiences with the Compass 360 Grand Am Cup team and the amazing increase in reliability they got by using it and by Eric Hsu and his experiences.  These are very powerful testimonies and it got us using the process and we were amazed by the results we obtain.  Its not BS and we are not paid to say so.

With MotoIQ, you have a group with more experience in everything from driving to chassis setup than you will find with any other publication in print or on the web.  I personally stand by our advise and our articles.

Lastly what the hell do you expect for free!  How much did you pay for your MotoIQ subscription?

KW Variant 3’s are used all around with a twist, Robispec valving with a foot valve with a higher blow off rate giving a slightly more digressive compression damping curve. The additional low speed compression damping gives a snappier response to driver input and a little more body motion control than the standard valving with little ride penalty.

The OS Giken "Super Lock" LSD is a more advanced design of a limited slip called a Salisbury differential. The Salisbury diff is one of the most common designs in racing cars and uses cone-spring preloaded clutches to provide the limited slip action just like a conventional limited slip but with a twist. The cross shaft of the spider gears is actually a cam that rides in a hole between two half’s of a split carrier that is driven by the ring gear of the differential. As the ring gear applies torque to the differential case and the carrier, the cross shaft cam which is coupled to the wheels is wedged into the carrier’s "ramps", applying force that wants to split the two halves apart. This force squeezes the differential’s clutch packs. As more torque applied to the differential, the more the clutch plates lock together and prevent differences in wheel speed.

 Project FD? Is it going to be rotary powered or pushrod powered? 

Posted By smartbomb on 11-29-2009 10:28 PM
LS powered.

can't wait to read it, I had one at some point, but ddin't have enough money to do the swap when the engine went. Its one of my dream cars.

Posted By smartbomb on 11-29-2009 09:02 PM
Congratulations! We have found our next writer! When can you start (seriously). 

i wouldn't mind reading about that MA71 supra you got there!  i've had my head under the hood of one the last couple days.  love that car.  probobly not the best car out there, but i enjoy it, and thats the best reason i can see to work on one.

 

as for promotion, i tried bumping the GRM topic while praising you guys while still trying to appear legit and not just advertizing, but it may not have worked.... maybe i'll do it again. right now... i wish i could guy a t-shirt and walk around some car-guys, maybe a shirt with colman/kojima's face all huge on the back so i could start conversations, but i don' tknow many car geeks, and i don't have any shirts, so thats out... but then again i can get a printable iron-on and do some top class Paint photoshopping and BAM new T-shirt !

i wouldn't mind reading about that MA71 supra you got there! i've had my head under the hood of one the last couple days. love that car. probobly not the best car out there, but i enjoy it, and thats the best reason i can see to work on one.

Hey if you're looking for some writing help, I'm not a bad scribbler myself. Unfortunately I don't quite have the technical savvy to write myself to the top of nerd-dom, but I would be interested to contribute in other ways such as editing or what else you may need. I've got some background at the car dealership level and at the OEM level.

I made a post at vwvortex / the car lounge http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothread?id=4672036 and in my local thread with my car friends http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothre...;page=1169

and at city-data.com which has a good amount of traffic on the automotive forum but not too many nerdslwww.city-data.com/forum/automotive/...-mags.html

Posted By yo vanilla on 12-02-2009 06:53 PM

Hey if you're looking for some writing help, I'm not a bad scribbler myself. Unfortunately I don't quite have the technical savvy to write myself to the top of nerd-dom, but I would be interested to contribute in other ways such as editing or what else you may need. I've got some background at the car dealership level and at the OEM level.

I made a post at vwvortex / the car lounge http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothread?id=4672036 and in my local thread with my car friends http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothre...;page=1169

and at city-data.com which has a good amount of traffic on the automotive forum but not too many nerdslwww.city-data.com/forum/automotive/...-mags.html

If I remember correctly you have some domestic background as well.  Send Kojima (smartbomb) an e-mail.

I'd like to do some articles on my mk4 golf TDI to add additional diversity but my time has been directly focused on our virtual home here.