Most regretted mod you've done
Banned. I got OWNED!!!
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 1,970
Likes: 1
From: Connecticut
Especially the getting the harness where you want it to be part
. It'll be worth it in the end though.
About 5 years ago on my first FC (NA) I thought it would be cool to get a nicer steering wheel w/ hub. Made the huge mistake, as Titanium puts it, of buying off E-bizzle. The wheel was cheap, but the hub was dangerous. They sent me the wrong one, with the wrong pattern for turn signal switch.
I put the stupid thing on and torqued the nut for saftey... then 5 beeps, you know what that means. Wrong hub so I crushed my steering sensor. Decided to take a test spin and it just felt wrong. I took off the hub and to my horror the splines inside the hub were stripping. That garbage could have killed me.
I put the stupid thing on and torqued the nut for saftey... then 5 beeps, you know what that means. Wrong hub so I crushed my steering sensor. Decided to take a test spin and it just felt wrong. I took off the hub and to my horror the splines inside the hub were stripping. That garbage could have killed me.
1. Using the stock NA intakes for my 6 port turbo. Stupid spacer is a PITA to deal with and all the piping is on the same side. Couldn't have avoided this since I didn't have a garage to let the car sit w/ the intakes off at the time.
2. Using rubber fuel hose as oil supply
Worked great until I removed and reinstalled it, must've gotten a cut from something, a full quart of oil drained into some random gas station, fun night.
3. Buying an S4 turbo for the conversion (undivided manifold, crappy single chamber wastegate)
2. Using rubber fuel hose as oil supply
Worked great until I removed and reinstalled it, must've gotten a cut from something, a full quart of oil drained into some random gas station, fun night.3. Buying an S4 turbo for the conversion (undivided manifold, crappy single chamber wastegate)
Hookt UP
Joined: Feb 2008
Posts: 227
Likes: 5
From: Sacramento
Haha..These are some of my favorite threads... mistake 1-101
1. selling your mint n/a for a rusty TII with paint falling off to the touch and a motor that sounded like a 90yo smoker coughing up lung butter! not to mention the engine was doing flips because of the exhaust leak and tps being shot.
I still bought it
2. dropping thousand into the car to get it to run right, when everyone hates cause its a 87. Im still here and I love it!
3. yanking the harness out of my MAf to completely remove it to run with no MAF.Didnt work. didnt run. and i broke the MAF
rendered inoperable
4. The worst one was putting the white gauge face on my gauges. Gas, temp, oil pressure and boost are all off or completely non functional. problems ever since.
Best mod yet..... PFC F-COn. soo easy, great results
1. selling your mint n/a for a rusty TII with paint falling off to the touch and a motor that sounded like a 90yo smoker coughing up lung butter! not to mention the engine was doing flips because of the exhaust leak and tps being shot.
I still bought it
2. dropping thousand into the car to get it to run right, when everyone hates cause its a 87. Im still here and I love it!
3. yanking the harness out of my MAf to completely remove it to run with no MAF.Didnt work. didnt run. and i broke the MAF
rendered inoperable
4. The worst one was putting the white gauge face on my gauges. Gas, temp, oil pressure and boost are all off or completely non functional. problems ever since.
Best mod yet..... PFC F-COn. soo easy, great results
Hookt UP
Joined: Feb 2008
Posts: 227
Likes: 5
From: Sacramento
one more...
buying a s5 turbo w/ ported wastegate from a forum member.crappy port job, flappers are not flush and 4 blades of the turbine are fractured off. here i am thinkin Im getting a deal for 180. you get what you pay for, yet i still overpayed. shoulda just ported the s4. Now Im looking at compressor wheel replacements from BNR.
Im not gonna do it!!, or Ill end up back on here griping about my fumbled turbo rebuild project!
buying a s5 turbo w/ ported wastegate from a forum member.crappy port job, flappers are not flush and 4 blades of the turbine are fractured off. here i am thinkin Im getting a deal for 180. you get what you pay for, yet i still overpayed. shoulda just ported the s4. Now Im looking at compressor wheel replacements from BNR.
Im not gonna do it!!, or Ill end up back on here griping about my fumbled turbo rebuild project!
^^
I have two now, so I am going to build a race car that I drive on the street every now and then and leave the other one alone.
I bought an Rtek 2.1 when I really needed a full stand alone. Now in the process of doing a megasquirt, I hope I don't regret that later ( I shouldn't, so far I am impressed)
I have two now, so I am going to build a race car that I drive on the street every now and then and leave the other one alone.
I bought an Rtek 2.1 when I really needed a full stand alone. Now in the process of doing a megasquirt, I hope I don't regret that later ( I shouldn't, so far I am impressed)
This is a semi mod-
I regret almost getting my car tuned by steve kan, and making my friend take my spot. Was a complete waste of money for both of us. His engine is still fine after getting re-tuned so I guess it could have been worse.
When I was trying to get my car started after getting a shotty map from a forum member, I had a battery charger on my battery and it blew my e11v2. :/ But in hindsight it saved my car from the kan "tune".
I reget putting a questionable wiring stock wiring harness in my second NA-T swap.
Lol, I almost forgot, buying those ebay color changing gauges was fail.
I bought a used ebay style divided manifold off a forum member here for like 40$ shipped. Lol I wasn't expecting it to be very good but it worked for a while till I noticed slow boost resonse and all the exhaust leaks. (the engine to manifold flange was hella warped) 4 hours of me grinding away at it with a portable belt sander and it seems to be working well now.
Buying my T04S through cheapturbos.com I regret, they are just ... bad at life.
At first I wasn't sure if I made the decision to port and balance my motor but I am more than happy with it now.
Buying a car from guanico based off just the fact that it had a running RE in it was my most epic failure. There were so many things wrong with it I would get arthritis listing everything before I could finish this post. Lesson learned, it's 10x easier to start fresh than try and fix other people's retarded mistakes.
That's it for me so far, hopefully not many more to come.
~Tweak
I regret almost getting my car tuned by steve kan, and making my friend take my spot. Was a complete waste of money for both of us. His engine is still fine after getting re-tuned so I guess it could have been worse.
When I was trying to get my car started after getting a shotty map from a forum member, I had a battery charger on my battery and it blew my e11v2. :/ But in hindsight it saved my car from the kan "tune".
I reget putting a questionable wiring stock wiring harness in my second NA-T swap.
Lol, I almost forgot, buying those ebay color changing gauges was fail.
I bought a used ebay style divided manifold off a forum member here for like 40$ shipped. Lol I wasn't expecting it to be very good but it worked for a while till I noticed slow boost resonse and all the exhaust leaks. (the engine to manifold flange was hella warped) 4 hours of me grinding away at it with a portable belt sander and it seems to be working well now.
Buying my T04S through cheapturbos.com I regret, they are just ... bad at life.
At first I wasn't sure if I made the decision to port and balance my motor but I am more than happy with it now.
Buying a car from guanico based off just the fact that it had a running RE in it was my most epic failure. There were so many things wrong with it I would get arthritis listing everything before I could finish this post. Lesson learned, it's 10x easier to start fresh than try and fix other people's retarded mistakes.
That's it for me so far, hopefully not many more to come.
~Tweak
From what I hear Mr. Kan will get you tuned right for WOT full boost pulls but since his "meets" are crowded and offer limited time he will not tune for comfortable drivability. This is strictly an assumption from what i have read here. I have not met Steve personally and am not trying to disrespect him and his business. I am sure he knows what he is doing and the type of tune depends on how much time you want to spend ALL dependent on the good working condition of your set-up.
Last edited by FC3S Murray; Dec 3, 2008 at 07:30 PM.
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 2,897
Likes: 2
From: Renton/Bellevue/Seattle WA
Yeah, that's what most think until they experience a real tune. He is an amazing business man. This isn't the place to get into detail, I just was lucky I dodged a bullet.
Murray kinda has the gist though, he tunes too many cars in too small of a time frame.
Murray kinda has the gist though, he tunes too many cars in too small of a time frame.
Last edited by TweakGames; Dec 3, 2008 at 07:53 PM.
Joined: Feb 2001
Posts: 29,798
Likes: 128
From: London, Ontario, Canada
Many "rent a tuner" types get booked for dyno days and have to tune 5-10 cars in a 10 hour period. That's just not enough time to get a quality tune. Keep in mind that most of those cars come in running like complete junkers so the difference between the start of the tune and the end of the tune is a dramatic improvement no matter what is done. It's a question of time mostly. No tuner can give you the kind of quality tune in a hour that another tuner can give you over a few days (working a few hours each day). A tune needs to be spread out so it can encompass cold start, varying air temps, drivability, idle, etc. WOT is the easiest thing to tune.
Lonely Driver
Joined: Jan 2007
Posts: 26
Likes: 0
From: Marietta, GA
Not really a mod... But:
-Buying the 7 without doing any research about the car (yea, I was an Initial D fanboy at the time) off of eBay - and then negotiating over the phone and bypassed eBay+PayPal.
-Receiving the car flooded. Killed the engine cause the NAPA guy gave me the wrong spark plugs.
-Took 6 months of spamming NAPA to replace my engine (finally did)
-Spent wayyyy too much money fixing it up when I should've just bought a used one from a private seller who actually cared for it.
But mod wise: Being an idiot and putting solid mounts on a stock daily driver.
-Buying the 7 without doing any research about the car (yea, I was an Initial D fanboy at the time) off of eBay - and then negotiating over the phone and bypassed eBay+PayPal.
-Receiving the car flooded. Killed the engine cause the NAPA guy gave me the wrong spark plugs.
-Took 6 months of spamming NAPA to replace my engine (finally did)
-Spent wayyyy too much money fixing it up when I should've just bought a used one from a private seller who actually cared for it.
But mod wise: Being an idiot and putting solid mounts on a stock daily driver.
Taking my car apart to do one mod and then taking something else off "while it's apart". Then just doing that over and over and over again until the whole car was taken apart. Required too much time and effort to rebuild it and after having it sit in the driveway for a few years finally parted it out.
Sceond big mistake was doing it all over again with the next car I bought. Doh! Once again, getting rid of it.
Now I'm about to buy a completely stock 2nd gen that's never been modded. It's going to pretty much stay that way too. Aside from doing simple bolt on's, I'm sick of working on them. I just want to own and drive a nice looking one. Being the fastest no longer matters.
Sceond big mistake was doing it all over again with the next car I bought. Doh! Once again, getting rid of it.
Now I'm about to buy a completely stock 2nd gen that's never been modded. It's going to pretty much stay that way too. Aside from doing simple bolt on's, I'm sick of working on them. I just want to own and drive a nice looking one. Being the fastest no longer matters.
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 2,897
Likes: 2
From: Renton/Bellevue/Seattle WA
Most regretted? Currently it's the automatic to manual swap that I have done on my silver car. Why is this? Because it's caused me to have to repair all the little things that are now larger problems. Such as the motor being low compression...the injectors leaking so terribly that the car floods after a few hours of sitting in a hardcore kind of way...the lack of power due to A.) Low compression and B.) Bad fuel injectors. The fact that I cannot currently use my entire Racing Beat exhaust system on the car because it's converted and has a crossmember adapter that is too wide. The car has a fucked up setup because I left the low mileage 3.909 LSD in instead of swapping in a 4.10 LSD like normal people.
You see, one simple conversion process sparked this whole **** fest of work to do. Sweet!
You see, one simple conversion process sparked this whole **** fest of work to do. Sweet!