The $600 Black Belt

I always smell some burning oil after driving particularly after some spirited sessions. At first I've thought it came from the valve cover seal but it wasn't. So one day I went to my-trusted-and-always-busy mech and found that my crankcase oil seals were leaked. To add insult to the injury, my 30,000 km's cam belt was soaked with engine oil too (the belt was quite damp). This shit was discovered right few days after I've changed the suspension bushings. Since driving a car with a worn belt is like having a ticking time bomb, I try not to be a smartass to hold it any longer and change it right away.

And I was right, the cam belt was so worn and the were few visible cracks all over it. On an interference engine, this is a serious matter to look after. Once the belt snapped while the engine is operating, you can kiss the head parts goodbye. Getting the head replacement part for the MIVEC ain't cheap either, especially nowadays. Hell, even the cheap cam cover gasket cost almost $80 (the one you can get less than $30 for 4G93 DOHC). Everything that falls under the name of so-called mighty JDM part is expensive. *Sigh...

Bad Bad Bush

Suspension bushes are some of the most highly stressed components fitted to a motor car. They undergo enormous strains and in the most arduous of conditions with no maintenance or lubrication needed. Imagine when you hit a pothole, your wheel will experience a hell of a shock but those bushes were felt worse. They are fitted as slave to provide a noise and vibration absorbing barrier between the road and the master.. well, i mean, the driver.

Eventually the suspension bushes will become worn which the driver may notice a change in the vehicle's handling or steering as well as some knocking noise. Cut the story short, I've changed mine last week and I swear on my long gone grand father's grave (Bless him :P) the car behave much more predictable than before.

Tie rod end - part of the steering mechanism in a vehicle. A worn tie rod can cause wandering, unprecise steering control and also major tire wear (related to alignment problem). Mine was worn and broken. All of above bad tie rod end symptoms were present.

The old lower arm bushes. These bushes will harden over time and will affected the car stability and comfort. These detoriated parts also tend to produce some knocking sound when driving over an uneven roads or speed humps.


Stabilizer link bush - this part connected to the stabilizer @ anti-roll bar beneath the car. Worn bushes affected stability and comfort.


All of the replacement parts.

Down to Earth

Resistance is futile! By resistance, I mean electrical resistance involving car electrical system. Good electrical performance requires a grounding system that's prepared to take a lot of current with minimal resistance. Your spark plugs, lights, fans, ICE, air conditioner, too-fast-too-furious-look-a-like undercarriage neons and so on all benefit from good electrical cabling. They all share a common ground, however, these ground connections rusted or come loose over time, the amount of conductive material decreases. This leads to resistance.

A quick option to solve this problem is by changing all the factory earth cable or the cheaper and popular choice; by adding additional ground cable, known as ground wire kit or earth wire kit. Beside multiple names it has, the earth wire kit serve only one purpose; get your electric current grounded. How well this tiny cables are going to help the thicker factory cables? Was the material used is superior than the factory's? I seriously doubt this bunch of wires with some broken english on the packaging with misspelled word will do much different. But, since it was on sale, I bought it.

I put the additional wire on cover rocker, throttle body, alternator, air cond compressor (? - got an extra wire, I just mounted there) and ended at the negative battery terminal.

Did I noticed any less dimming headlights? No.

Better fuel consumption? No.

Increased power and better low end torque? Are you kiddin' me?

But I've experienced a smoother and subtler cam engagement though. Radio reception seems to be better by a lil margin, apart from that, this cables serve more as cosmetic item rather than functionality.

In my opinion, earthing kits do work to some extent, but only with older cars where earth has deteriorated badly; such as a very old half-cut engine from junkyard. Most of the time the engine bay is exposed to rain and those ageing cables couldn't perform like when they were new.

Clash of the Titan

"B16A VTEC is faster than 4G92 MIVEC even in a stock form, let alone the crappy 20V"
"Can my 4G92 MIVEC smoke the shit outta Civic?
"MIVEC is shit and my VTEC is king!!"

You can find this similar phrase in the end-less topic in any car discussion forums on the net. Does it really matters? Apparently they do to some people. This is the only video that I can find which both B16A VTEC and 4G92 MIVEC lose to 4AGE 20V. I strongly believe, this is mainly because of launching and shifting technique; as the power output differences for each car isn't that great (+/- 10ps). You can find another version on the net (indeed, the one which is very famous) which featured all of this cars, but the result was very much different. I wonder why this version (the one in this blog) is hardly known to everyone especially to those VTEC's fanatics. As per say, sharing is caring... seeing is believing.

credit to : http://asia.vtec.net/side/cyborg/ , http://www.mivec.co.nz/

11th hour - All the Small Things

The mother earth is turning its back on us. Thank to no one else but ourselves. We use all the resources and never interested of preserving it back. We pollute the same air and water that we drink and breathe. We put a portion from our salary into saving accounts for future use, but fail to give a thought whether is there going to be any 'future' left.

I would like to list just 3 small things we (the car freaks) can do to help ease this global complication.

• Don't kill the cat
  They exist for a reason. To let us breathe the air without poisoning ourselves. Removal of cat-con is undeniably lessen the restriction inside exhaust system which eventually giving extra power. But just how much power were gained after the removal, and is it really worth the risk? On N/A engines, cat removal average about 2-3% gain in hp. If your lovely car produce 100hp from factory, you probably will gain 2-3hp at the expend of creating acid rain which eventually will screw your glossy metallic paint. And how fast is additional 2-3hp? A-tenth of a second faster than before, most of it. You can actually gain that by improving your shifting technique, and it's free. Cat removal is popular choice because it's cheap and not illegal (in this country of course). But removing cat especially from a newer OBD-II car actually will rob your overall performace due to richen fuel mixture. You might need a piggyback to sort that out. Now, plus the piggyback price, is the cost of the cat-removal mod really cheap?
  


• Use better oil
  It's quite confusing how some people willing to spend hundreds (if not thousands) for car accessories such as razor-sharp diffusers or some bad-ass stainless sport muffler or some so-called advanced nano-tech fuel saver, but yet very stingy when it comes to engine oil. Choose a good quality oil, not some unknown brand or some space-shuttle-sound-a-like brand that you found in Tesco or Carrefour. A simple guide, if the brandname is known worldwide then they usually good. A good oil can last longer interval hence, preventing the disposal of additional oil waste. A good oil also meets tough requirement (such as API and ACEA) which not only protect your engine better in long run, but also help us to protect our planet by less wastage.
  

• Extend your filter usage period*
• Changing air filter too often is not good for your engine, and the same can be said about changing oil filter too. Engine air filters are designed to actually increase their efficiency by using this initial layer of dust as an added filter layer. Initial filter efficiency is usually approximately 98% but increases to more than 99% by the end of the service life of the filter. Get a decent filter or stick with OEM's rather than buying those cheaply built filter. Not only we benefit from avoiding dirt gets into our engine, we also can save some trees and let the monkeys live happily.

* content was refered from www.osti.gov/bridge