In response to my previous post, Albert from Poland sent me an email with some You Tube videos of some real deal street racing in Poland. He sent a link to a video from Adrenaline Motorsports in Warsaw. The video is a pretty damn decent production and features some cool camera angles and editing. Do a search on YT for more vids.

More Street Racing in Poland

In response to my previous post, Albert from Poland sent me an email with some You Tube videos of some real deal street racing in Poland. He sent a link to a video from Adrenaline Motorsports in Warsaw. The video is a pretty damn decent production and features some cool camera angles and editing. Do a search on YT for more vids.

Check out the Fast & Furious Tokyo Drift st...

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Street Racing in Poland

Since my last post almost 3 days ago, the Castrol Top Shop votes for Sport Compact Car only went up by 600 votes. You guys are fucking weak! Ok fine, read my blog and be lazy. It turns out that the other magazines used a voting script and that's why they added the keyword verification to stop the scripts from continually voting. In case you don't feel lazy, please vote here: CASTROL TOP SHOP CHALLENGE.

One of the old masters here at Cosworth, Colin, came up to me and asked me, "Have you heard about street racing in Poland? I saw a Skyline in the video." He knows that I am a Skyline freak since I am continua...

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Castrol Top Shop

Castrol Syntec and Source Interlink (publishers of Sport Compact Car, Import Tuner, Turbo, Modified, and Super Street magazines) are hosting a competition called "Top Shop" where engines will be run on an engine dyno and compared against each other. Check it out here: CASTROL SYNTEC TOP SHOP CHALLENGE. It basically involves an engine builder or shop that teams up with a Source Interlink (SI) magazine and builds as engine. So not only is it a challenge between the shops, but also between the magazines. Cosworth teamed up with Sport Compact Car Magazine which is probably the most technically competent out of the SI titles. Check...

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Supercharged Cosworth Miata

Last Thursday I had the opportunity to test drive the newly supercharged Miata by Cosworth. The system was designed by scratch and should be released toward the end of summer finally. As with many projects, we are currently behind schedule, but good things come to those that wait right? Anyhow, we are finally in the calibration stage and having a tuning background, I was asked to cruise it around and take some notes. A couple of rough spots in the calibration will be smoothed out very soon. The blower system is designed to be 50 state legal and should see EPA laboratory testing in the very near future.

Admit it: the stock Miata is slow. You have to keep the revs over 4000rpm or i...

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R35 GT-R @ XS Engineering

Lucky bastard Carter Jung (chief editor at Import Tuner Magazine) got to cruise an R35 around last week. So what was the first thing he did with it? He took it over to XS to see how much power the car really made. Carter is no stranger to buff Japanese cars. He owns an R33 GT-R and a real deal (albeit old school) 5Zigen JGTC GT500 Supra.

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Somebody forwarded this email to me today where this new company, Titek, was promoting their magnetic drain plugs for an engine's oil pan. While the concept is somewhat novel, it's application is kind of dumb. A magnetic drain plug (mdp) has its place in a transmission with steel gears or a rear end with steel gears and metallic clutches where bits of steel can actually float around in the oil. However, a mdp actually has no place in an engine's crankcase if you really think about it. In the remote possibility that your engine's cams are gear driven, an mdp might have a place, but chances are if you are reading this blog your engine does not have gear driven cams. Let's think about what's inside of an engine block for a second here: a crankshaft, bearings, rods, pistons, wrist pins, pin clips, and piston rings. The crank, rods, and pins are all riding on films of oil. The pin clips hold the wrist pins in place and the piston rings are held in place by the piston's ring lands and neither bits of clips or rings can come out unless a catastrophic failure occurs. In the head, you have cams, followers, springs,retainers, and locks. If any of these components fail, the last thing you need to be worrying about is catching bits of steel at the very bottom of an oil pan with a mdp. So in a healthy engine, what's the purpose of having a mdp? The only components that can wear are the bearings and at that point your engine has become unhealthy probably due to a cracked oil pump rotor, oil pickup tube, lack of oil or pump cavitation and is living on borrowed time anyway. Bearings consist of lead, tin, copper, and sometimes babbit and/or aluminum. The last time I checked, none of these elements were magnetic because they are non ferrous. If the steel components break (crank, rods, pins, clips, or rings) or chip, the last thing you need to be worry about again is catching bits of steel at the very bottom of the oil pan with a mdp. You will more likely be either on the side of the road or track with a hole in your engine block and waiting for a tow truck. No mdp no matter how strong it's magnet is, is going to save the day. While technically it cannot hurt to use an mdp on your engine's oil pan, it has no merit either. I'm not bagging on Titek since I know nothing about their products and I'm sure there are other companies that make mdps. I'm just making a point that mdps are useless. Some companies like to make products to increase sales so you can spend your hard earned money. That's ok, but spend it on something that's worth a shit.

Magnetic Drain Plugs

Somebody forwarded this email to me today where this new company, Titek, was promoting their magnetic drain plugs for an engine's oil pan. While the concept is somewhat novel, it's application is kind of dumb. A magnetic drain plug (mdp) has its place in a transmission with steel gears or a rear end with steel gears and metallic clutches where bits of steel can actually float around in the oil. However, a mdp actually has no place in an engine's crankcase if you really think about it. In the remote possibility that your engine's cams are gear driven, an mdp might have a place, but chances are if you are reading this blog your engine does not have gear driven cams.

Let's think abo...

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Shanghai Grand

I've been in Shanghai since last week enjoying the city. My buddy Daniel opened a factory several years ago over here that does all sorts of metal working. His factory currently does work for some of the larger OEM vehicle manufacturers throughout the world and is ISO 9001 certified. So Daniel invited me to check it out to see if he could solicit some business from me. I figure that I talk all this crap about Chinamen companies so it was time to see for myself at a high end factory. Those of you who have been reading my blog know how I feel about manufacturers in China. To be honest though, I really went because it...

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New Lancer OZ Rally? Not Quite an EVO X

Stephen Quinn who used to help out here and there at XS several years ago sent me an email telling me about a photo shoot he saw going on at Cal Poly Pomona (he's going for his ME degree I think). Just outside the quad at the CLA building, was a photo shoot of the new Lancer OZ Ralliart something or other. I think it's supposed to compete with the WRX and not the STI. Anyhow, here are some excerpts from Stephen's email:

"...We THINK this is the new Lancer OZ Rally edition because my friend swears he saw that through the lens of his camera on the back of the car. I did not get any rear views of it so I cannot say...The car looked like an Evo X to me from a distance but I immediate...

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Clutches, again

Told you so:

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Cosworth, Ford, Audi, and Mahle

Cruising the web, I googled 'Cosworth'. On the first page, 'Mahle Powertrain' popped up. I clicked it and looked under history and there is a fairly detailed time line on Cosworth's history. For those of you who don't know, Cosworth Engineering was the company that Mike Costin and Keith Duckworth started back in 1958. There were many parties who bought and sold Cosworth throughout the years, but Audi purchased the entire Cosworth company back in 1998 and sold Cosworth Racing to Ford. The engineering, castings, and manufacturing units continued operating as Cosworth Technologies. In 2005 Cosworth Technologies was purchased by Mahle Powertrain. The division that we all know and love for ...

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