Oils

 Many Motorists take the view that one oil is much the same as another, so why spend more than the minimum when purchasing? Well, although oils may look and feel very similar, their specifications are as wide and varied as the number of brands on the market. The bottom line is that filling your engine with a poor quality or incorrect secification of oil will drastically reduce its service life, in some cases within just a few miles!

Modern multi grade oils are no longer a base product refined from crude oil, they are also a complex alchemy of additives such as viscosity index improvers, detergent dispersants and many others besides, add to this all the various synthetic oils now being produced and you begin to realise that not all oils are the same.

Viscosity is simply the thickness of an oil, most engine wear occurs during the critical moments following a cold start, high viscosity oils circulate slower than low viscosity oils and the colder the oil, the thicker it will be.All multigrade oils are tested for two criteria i.e. maximum viscosity when cold and secondly, minimum viscosity when hot.The first test is referred to as a winter test, hence the `w` suffixwhich denotes the thickness (20w) or thinness (5w)of an oil during cold start conditions.The second test is to give a clear indication of the oil's minimum viscosity during normal operating temperatures.As wit the winter test, the higher  the number the higher the thickness of the oil.To avoid confusion it must be noted that the methodology used for these two tests is entirely seperate and bear no relation to each other.All oils get thinner as they get hotter so dont be fooled into believing that say a 20w/50 oil ges thicker as it gets hotter, it doesnt!

The Clutch

Modern day clutch material is typically 50% harder wearing than the now superseded asbestos material,making clutch replacement less frequent.One disadvantage of this is that it tends to wear the flywheel instead.

When replacing a clutch, the condition of both surfaces is highly important.A new hard wearing clutch will not bed into a worn and uneven flywheel and failure of the clutch is certain, if in doubt, always reface the flywheel and change the clutch cover with the clutch disc.

Low Compression Piston Kits

 Lowering the compression in your Turbocharged engine below standard actually reduces your power, you have to make up for the loss in power by increasing your boost to a higher level than you were running in the first place.

Say you were running standard compression with 10 psi of boost, well if you lowered your compression you would probably need to run around 14 psi to achieve the same power! In some cases you can benefit from a lower compression ratio, but i cant see how as it would completely contradict what the above says.Most Tuners would advise against this route of upgrade and i would advise forged or accralite pistons with the standard compression ratio for the highest power gains.

Induction Kits

Induction Kits are not actually as good as people think, in some cases you will achieve a higher power gain with the original air box and a performance element, this is because the original airbox has been designed to maximise cold air flow and the plastic surrounding keeps the heat out.Most people just buy an induction kit and dont realise they have actually just lost power, unless fitted propperly with the propper air ducting all they do is suck all the hot air out from under your bonnet!

Cheap Performance Chips On Ebay

These are cheap resistors that you can buy from Maplins for pennies and they can actually do a lot of expensive damage to your car! Dont be fooled by the little black box with the wires coming out of it, that makes it look like its a professionally made piggy back chip.These are supposed to be wired into your airflow meter which makes your engine think it is sucking an abnormal amount of air, this then makes your engine run really rich and i suppose it could make some cars feel slightly faster, at the same time running too rich can cause lots of problems, eventually you will regret that bargain you thought you got.