By Mike Kojima
It’s been a while since we tested our last power adder on Project Tundra, a TRD cold air intake. Not that we had any complaints about our truck's power. Project Tundra continues as always in service as our main office truck, hauling parts, towing our project cars around and serving as our mobile headquarters at events where it can haul scooters, photo gear, a race car, tools and parts. Like our staff, our Tundra is always working hard.
Read more about Project Tundra Here!
For our next round of tweaks, we obtained a set of Cosworth M2 cams for the MIVEC variable cam timing version of the 4G63 found in our EVO IX. Camshaft design is very tricky with many of the aftermarket offerings not being engineered to control spring surge induced valve float.
Read More About Project EVO IX here!
What are the pro's and con's of using gapless piston rings in a street motor?
Got a difficult tech question? Email Sarah at asksarah@motoiq.com
Frankenmiata: Dyno Secrets Revealed For The First Time!
by Dave Coleman
Secrets? What Secrets? How about the secret to how we found 45 hp completely by accident? Or the secret to how we made 20 lb-ft of torque for $8.32?
In our last edition of Project G35 we set out to improve our handling with some suspension by KW. To keep things in line with having a balanced performance daily driver we next turned our attention to the brakes.
One of the bad things about having an unusual car like our Lexus IS-F is that it is, well, an unusual car. The IS-F is the first attempt by a rather young maker, in this case Lexus to build and market a true performance car. Lexus has a reputation for luxury with value and rock solid reliability, not a performance and racing pedigree.
Project Garage Part IV: Air Compressors
by Sarah Forst
Many times I've struggled with stubborn bolts, cursing car manufacturers wth a number of expletives in languages I didn't know I could speak. Stripped, rusted, or fused, these bolts can make any breaker bar retire early and hit happy hour. Unfortunately if I ever wanted to mod any of my cars, my only other option was blowing off some steam… well, hot air really. My air compressor is not only convenient, but necessary.
Technobabble - Redefining Monkeypower
Automotive terms and definitions have a long history of being stupid and arbitrary, and I have no intention of changing that, but if we’re going to be stupid, let’s at least use monkeys.
We had to back up a little and relaunch our engine series getting help from our friend Naji Dahi and his company Looney Tuning. We have known Naji many years from road racing as Naji is an avid racer. Although Naji races Nissans he has gained a good reputation as a tuner for EVOs and WRX/STIs.
Over the past few months in-between other projects we have been tinkering around with AEM’s water methanol injection kit on our in-house Evo IX project car. You can read about the kit here. A few weeks ago we installed AEM’s new injection monitoring system which you can read about here.
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