The car thread

The impact of a $3 oil filter. So, buy only orginal even their price is higher.

There are plenty of breakdown analysis of oil filters.

Fram sucks. 20 years ago they were good. 30 years ago they were great.

I buy Wix if possible.

Bosch is a good second buy.

OEM is good but overpriced and not as good as the previous two.

There are plenty of sites which dissect filters and analyze filter area, bypass valve pressure release, micron particle size (smallest isn't best), etc.
 
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ok gimp. go off and run on the aftermarket oil filter merry go round and go through an engine or two before you find one that works.


As you said FRAM used to be good until they went bad, so what makes you think that any good brand currently available now will be good in 5-10 years time? Your informed descision on which one to buy is then useless isn't it? Also you don't have the capabilities to check the micron filtration rating of the paper filters do you? Or are you going to build a device to test these? Because I don't see oil filter comparison tests available online which take the micron rating of the paper into account, or can you find one?


I'll stick to toyota.
 
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Didn't Ford call it the Posi-track

Posi-track, or "posi" was GM's trademark for a clutch type LSD. Chrysler (Mopar) used the trademark Sure Grip for a cone type LSD. Ford had several names depending if the diff was in a car or truck, but I remember Trac Loc or something like that.

These are open diffs with clutches that are progressively engaged by engine torque. Light throttle = open diff. Heavy throttle gets a near locked condition. The original reason for these things were the drag strip wars of the 1950's and early 60's by the OEM's. The test method used by us shade tree mechanics in the early 70's was to put one wheel on grass, the other on pavement and hit the gas or rev it and drop the clutch. Both wheels should spin with a good LSD, and enough power to spin the wheels. Reverse the direction to test the other clutch.

There were some OEM, and plenty of aftermarket "lockers" available in the 70's. These were manual, hydraulic or magnetically actuated and used cogs to lock the rear axles together. I saw them used on the dragstrip, but off road use was also common among the mudders, so was breakage.

A modern "smart" system uses open diffs or LSD's with computer control of the throttle and brakes to control tire spin. Pulsing the brakes on a spinning wheel will force the power to the other wheel(s), emulating a LSD system. Punching the throttle in my wife's 4WD Honda on an ice covered parking lot does provoke all sorts of ABS type sounds.

I don't bother with indexing my plugs.

I raced a 2.2 L FWD Dodge Charger in the 80's and 90's. The BMW guys could get Quaife's for their cars and did have a launch advantage on the drag strip. There was no LSD available for my car, but I could usually smoke M3's on the dragstrip and was about 50-50 with 5.0 Mustangs depending on driver skill and whether or not I accidentally hit the 7200 RPM rev limiter. Autocross was a different story. There was a guy with a modified 2002 that smoked everybody....until the Miatas and new supercharged Minis arrived.

I played with spark plugs for an afternoon when I got nearly a whole day of dyno time for free. Despite the class action lawsuit claiming the they were worthless, Split Fire plugs gave me a couple of HP over Champions at 6500 RPM and indexing helped, but I don't remember for sure how they were pointed (I think the gap faced the exhaust valve). My cylinder head bore no resemblance to the stock unit with some serious porting and unshrouding along with angle milling. The block was "O" ringed to contain the boost.

go off and run on the aftermarket oil filter merry go round and go through an engine or two before you find one that works.

If you change your oil regularly the filter should make less of a difference in engine life than the oil itself. Modern fuel injected engines are quite clean.

After several years of racing the turbo Dodge with no oil related failures and NEVER changing the turbo I have used nothing but Mobil 1 in any car I have owned since. Carroll Shelby told me to run it in my engine AND in the manual transaxle. He knew a lot more about cars than all os us put together, so I listened. Other racers were changing turbos every year due to oil failure (coking).
 
Fram always sucked, as I recall from tests I’d looked at that were conducted some 30+ years ago. A very large percentage of all filters are made by Champion filter co., and they are decent. I use the oem ones because they always have the anti-drain-back valve. The aftermarket ones are a one size fits all, usually with no drain back valve.

The air cooled VWs had a screen for an oil filter, and you just changed the oil more often.

Have you ever seen an engine that had been run on the paraffin based oil (ie Pennzoil), with long intervals? You could take off a valve cover and have a loaf of residue left in the shape of the cover.

I liked the 2.2l minivans that people would raise the boost on, pretty entertaining.
 
I liked the 2.2l minivans that people would raise the boost on, pretty entertaining.

Some of the later turbo minivans had 2.5's, same engine with a longer stroke.

Stuff the same engine in 2200 pound Omni or Charger (2 door Omni) and the fun factor goes way up since that minivan weighs at least 1000 pounds more.

Experience taught me that the 2.2 spits out head gaskets when the boost goes much over 15 PSI. O rings, totally flat decks and heads, and a Shelby copper gasket gets you to 20 psi with a good intercooler. If you are going up against a 5.0 Mustang place a bag of ice on the intercooler while waiting in the staging lanes.
 
Do a search for “8 second Supra” and watch some of the myriad of videos displaying what can be done these days with a 25 year old street driven car using bolt on speed parts.

Will make the stuff we dedicated our youth to working on and driving look like child’s play.

I was talking with a Chrysler dealer mechanic back in the 80s, and he was telling me how they could access the factory computer and make changes to the timing and fuel settings to fix driveability issues. Said it happened a lot also!
So you never really knew where things were at if that had been done...
 
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Like Toyota produce their own oil filters.

I know with good advice that their oil is made by Mobil. The million dollar question is though is who makes their filters?

There is zero financial gain to be had with going with an aftermarket oil filter too as the Toyota oil filters are just as cheap.

You can get a box of 5 for $62 AUD delivered:
5 x Toyota Genuine Oil Filter 90915-YZZD2 X ref: Z418 | eBay

Unfortunately as for adding power to my 3VZ-FE it would require a complete rebuild and extensive modifications just to add a couple of pounds of boost to it. my CR is 9.6:1 which means it is a terrible place to start at.

I would have to lower the CR, make my own exhaust manifolds, jam two turbos into the cramped engine bay, replace the computer. too much work. and the superchargers are impossible to find.

All I will ever be doing to this engine is maybe doing a full rebuild on it and replacing the factory Y pipe on the exhaust with something a bit better. Once that is done I'll consider getting a Haltech ECU and take it from there as far as turbo goes.


But the $2,000 that it would cost me just for a ECU is already far too much for me of an investment to be making on this car.


I could add NOS...


^Hence the reason why I'm indexing my plugs and taking 30 minutes out of my "busy" life to do so.
 
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Chrysler dealer mechanic back in the 80s, and he was telling me how they could access the factory computer and make changes

My car ran 1984 vintage electronics. Those had soldered in PROM chips that held the program and tuning values. The OEM engine computers (ECU) in those days were actually built by Motorola, and since I worked there a few phone calls and some repaid favors got me the schematics of my board. The code was developed at Chrysler and not available to us.

I put a socket in my board. I got the computer from a stock 145 HP turbo motor, the computer from a Shelby 160 HP motor and the Direct Connection computer capable of about 180 HP. Comparison of the values in the PROM chips gave me clues as to what values to mess with to turn up the power. This led to multiple blown head gaskets from mixture related detonation issues. The factory fuel injectors ran out of flow capability at high boost and high RPM. A lean mixture + lotsa boost = blown gasket, or worse.

About this time there were all sorts of aftermarket add-ons for tweaking and eliminating "fuel cut." I took some clues from these things and simply added two additional fuel injectors in the plumbing between the intercooler and the intake manifold and built a DIY controller with a Motorola 68HC11 chip. It worked with the Direct Conection computer to reach about 225 HP.

Chrysler, through their Direct Connection program offered a "Super 60" kit to take the little 2.2L to 300 HP which was unheard of in 1985, but the kit was far beyond my price range, and I had already made the internal engine mods using junkyard parts.

I had graduated from blowing head gaskets to breaking transaxles, so more power was pointless.

Chrysler's next generation of ECU's were produced in house in their new Huntsville plant and they were programmable in the car. I had a 1994 minivan which had to be reprogrammed 3 times in the first year to fix driveability issues. The ECU (now called the Powertrain Control Module) in that vehicle controlled both the engine and transmission. All 3 reprogramming sessions were associated with erratic operation of the lockup torque converter that made the vehicle dangerous in the rain. Sometimes the converter would stay locked leading to a stalled engine when stopping, or a bucking bronco when trying to stop.
 
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nice car:
 

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Refurbrished my rear calipers with sandblasting, paint and new seals and pistons two months ago. Yesterday I finally found time to replace the pads and rotors. After 1km driving the coated rotors looked like this. Not bad for a single piston caliper. :)
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Is anyone doing horsepower engine upgrades?.......Not enough testosterone left to worry about it

I followed all the usual formulas for going fast in my younger days......

remove the wimpy 318 CID motor, install a 440 CID motor, go fast......add aluminum heads, big cam and manifold, change final drive ratio, modify trans to handle 500HP, go faster.

Remove 84 HP normally aspirated motor, install 145 HP turbo motor, go fast. More boost, intercooler, modify electronics, go faster. Blow transaxle......blow transaxle several times, make it beefier each time......wreck car.......find similar car with blown motor, transplant, more boost, go faster.....crash again......buy well used minivan for $1K, game over.

I currently drive a 10 year old Honda Element with a 140 HP 4 cylinder engine......the town speed limit is 25 MPH, no problem breaking the law if necessary.

A friend bought one of the new 500 HP Ford Mustangs. Within a year he traded it for a pickup truck. A RWD Mustang with 500 HP isn't the right car for twisty mountain roads in winter when you meet a fracking truck coming at you on a narrow road and he is wider than his lane is.
 
This is why you gap your spark plugs, so that the spark isn't bent by the fuel/air mix that is entering the combustion chamber via the intake:
YouTube


Basically you index your spark plug's negative terminal so that it is on the same side as your intake valves so that it acts as a shield against the incoming air/fuel mixture.

If your firing with the intake open you got some problems with valves interfacing with piston crown/s:rolleyes:

So riddle me this:
Exactly how do 'surface discharge' plugs work as they have no shielding electrode?
They seem to work fine in my bikes..... one will spin 14.2K, the other 16K

Aligning plugs is a waste of time, take your manifolds off and match them and your heads ports, gain can be as high as 2%.
 
Hmmmm. Is anyone doing horsepower engine upgrades?

Nitros, supercharging, turbo charging? Or increasing boost on existing super/turbo charged engines?

THx-Richard Marsh

Yes.
but on 2 wheels, 1+:1 power:weight for the 1/8 / 1/4 and flying mile.
one is a 900cc turbo petrol and the other 1280cc blown alkehol OR petrol

Strangely, we slap plugs in and they get melted.... maybe aligning them to a satellite would help?
Both have very rude names and are road legal.