Truck Customization in New Zealand.

As an avid car enthusiast, I find myself frequently drooling over customized vehicles that I find on the internet.  I’m not picky, if it has wheels and an engine, I’m probably drooling over it.  This is one that I originally came across on a truck forum, and saved the pictures because I think it is intriguingly awesome.

It was built by a guy in New Zealand and it is was a Mitsubishi L200, which are known as Mitsubishi Mightymax’s in the United States.   He chopped the roof, bobbed the bed, body-dropped it, and added some much needed air ride suspension.  Overall, very cool.  This is obviously a work in progress, but from what I remember, it was getting a turbocharged 4G63 engine from a Galant VR4 shortly after these pictures were taken.  These are from a year or two ago, does anybody out there have updates? I sure can’t find any.

Top 3 Most Awesome Ways to Destroy Your Engine

Once you get past the whole “I completely horrified my engine” thing, catastrophic engine damage is really awesome to see.  Here is the Nutts & Bolts Top 3 Most Awesome Ways to Destroy your Engine:

1) Blowing pistons and / or connecting rods right through the engine block

Typically when your internal engine parts forcefully become external, they do so for good reason. You likely built the engine wrong, over revved it, or had a complete lack of lubrication. What you may not realize, is that this seemingly negative action is a really just your car’s way of telling you it wants a more powerful engine.

2) Destroying your valves in epic fashion

Whether it is losing your timing belt at highway speeds with an interference engine, or running lean enough to turn steel into magma, it sure is fun to see.  The grossest display of shared combustion chamber space that I’ve seen was a Cadillac Catera that I worked on many years ago.  It had broken the heads off the valves, bounced them around the cylinders, and then pushed them right back through the exhaust ports.  The inside of the engine looked as if it were trying to combust rocks instead of gasoline.  It was an epic win for shared space that day. Let’s not forget burned valves though, you get an extra points when the valves burn and destroy your turbo in the same instant.

3) Recipe for disaster: The automotive cocktail of destruction

  • 1 Blown intake / head gasket
  • 1 Part Oil
  • 4 Part Antifreeze
  • 2 tbsp metal shavings
  • Mix vigorously
  • Cook at 220 degrees for approximately 3 minutes or until engine eruption is complete.
  • Enjoy automotive cocktail of destruction.

Bon appetit!

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Automotive confessions of the VW Variety.

I have spent quite a bit of time working on a chameleon painted Karmann Ghia, and I liked it.  There, I said it.  No, the car doesn’t have a V8, and it doesn’t have a clutch pedal for its manual transmission. However, it does have windshield squirters that are activated by the air pressure in the spare tire (seriously).

When this flamboyant automobile entered my family, I was a bit confused because I was used to the big American muscle cars, and modern sports cars.  This Volkswagen was just a wee-bit different.  It was not only the antithesis of all the vehicles I was used to, but it came with free pass into a bizarre automotive culture.  I would put the VW culture in the same genre as minitruckers, but just a touch more viral.  The Volkswagen crowd will convert you to one of their own before you even realize it happened.  One thing then leads to another and pretty soon you are replacing your oil pan and pulling a 23 window VW Bus out of a river.

What I am getting at here is that old VW’s are something that you need to mess around with at some point in life.  By no means am I saying that they are “the greatest car evah!”, or the only thing that can possibly save us from 2012.  What I am saying is that they are put together in a way like none other of their era, and aside from the windshield squirters and the missing pedals, I kind of like them.  Working on one of these foreign oddballs really opens a whole new thought process on how to put a car together.

Now what’s your automotive confession?

If coolness were Land Mass, This Engine would be the Louisiana Purchase.

If coolness were a land mass, this engine would be the Louisiana Purchase.  It has fuel injection, electronic ignition, and a centrifugal supercharger feeding a pair of large turbochargers.  Oh yeah, and it also appears to have a little nitrous to keep things scary.  The owner of this metallic masterpiece has combined every straight six owner’s crazy automotive dreams and put them into physical form.   I don’t know how much horsepower it makes or how fast the car runs, but my guess is that it will hit 1.21 gigawatts faster than you can say “easily tuned”.

The Mystery of the EVO IX Cylinder Head Drill Holes.

EvoIXhead

Let’s say you own a Mitsubishi Evolution IX, and want nothing more than to stand there and admire the turbocharged delicacy that resides beneath your hood.  You reach down for the hood release and are instantly greeted with the firm “thud” of the hood-pop in action.  Reluctantly, you free yourself from the hug-like grip of your race-inspired Recaro seat as you hop out of your machine.  The opened-windowed door closes behind you.  You walk toward the front of the vehicle while holding intense eye contact with your freshly cleaned 14-spoke BBS 17’s.  The hood is then effortlessly lifted toward the sky and you are greeted with one of the finest examples of Mitsubishi technology to ever roll off the assembly line, the 4G63.

Within an instant, your eyes focus on something that is clearly out of place.  It is something so strange that you aren’t sure if it belongs there or not.  You have looked at nearly eleven billion EVO’s in the past, but never noticed this kind of nonsense. You are stunned, disappointed, and nearly jallywagged. “What was the purpose of these drilled out holes in my cylinder head!?” you screamed at the heavens.  Sadly you are answered with the deafening sound of silence.

Maybe one of the readers can help?