These are the dumbest things you’ve done for speed – Jalopnik

Jalops are traditionally enthusiasts with a preponderance of tools, a can-do mentality and a desire to go fast. Traditionally, we are not exorbitantly rich. This means we’re often more inclined to build up our own speed than simply buy something fast, and it drives us to do all sorts of crazy modifications in the hopes of getting a little more power out of our cars. That’s why earlier this week I asked you about the dumbest thing you’ve ever done in search of speed.

You’ve turned in a wealth of answers, from small power-adder mods to entire vehicle purchases – or, in some cases, buying a collection of parts assembled into the vague shape of a car. Some of your stories were stupid in retrospect, some you knew were stupid even when you did them, and some probably never should have been done at all. Let’s see what you all said.

My first car was an old Austin Healey with SU carbs. The SU has a piston that goes up and down with the airflow and oil is used as a damper so that the piston does not rise or fall too quickly or bounce around. I was thinking thinner oil, instant airflow, faster acceleration. Filled the dash pot with WD 40. It didn’t work.

Submitted by: Greg Lemon

I’m trying to see if the smog pump would work as a supercharger on my Vega. That didn’t happen. Unfortunately, at least I was only 17.

Submitted by: Mistress Leah

During my first street race in high school, I was rowing through the gears as fast as I could to get into “top gear.” Finally the engine seized at 1,200 rpm in 4th gear. I was really smart.

Submitted by: Norm DePlume

For me, it wasn’t the advice of Bruce Fulper, master Pontiac engine builder, when I was setting up my 74 Firebird as a T/A clone street strip car in the early 2000s. He tuned up the stroke engine 455 I bought for it from a guy in N. Carolina who raced it with his Firebird (the engine was spec’d by Bruce and had his ported Edelbrock heads on it) and I was there when Bruce did some of the baseline runs on his new-to-him dyno. Before that, he had his engines tested at Westech. The water hoses blew off on the first pull. He panicked a bit because he thought his test bench had blown up, but no damage was done. Once he got it back together, he did a few pulls and then suggested we detune it a bit, of the nearly 700 horsepower it made, at no extra cost. In return he would take the massive roller cam, Victor intake, HP carb and aluminum rods. While it still retains plenty of horsepower, it would be more day-to-day driver friendly, rather than being pitched as a “Mad Max” type vehicle (his term). I was intoxicated by the sound and said no, and I regret it to this day because while it’s still lovely to listen to while running, it’s not a get-in-and-go car and as a result I rarely drive it. I was planning on taking it drag racing, it has a full cage, racing seats and other required elements for the time the bike’s original owner raced, but I was never able to get it to the strip.

Submitted by: Dan60

Full exhaust and 4.10 gears on my daily driven 2001 Mustang Bullitt. My hearing will never recover and shifting every 2 seconds got annoying really fast.

Submitted by: Arnold Rimmer

I bought a very beat up vintage Corvette.

I still have it. It’s been about 25 years now. It’s still broken, but I did leave it running for a while about twenty years ago.

Submitted by: Alastair Macrae

The dumbest? A long time ago I drove an SCCA Sports Renault: sports racer type bodies, powered by slow 78 hp Renault Alliance/Encore engines. With a header and the removal of most standard engine accessories, the racing powerhouses probably approximated as many as 90 horses.

Engines and transmissions are specially built and sealed to (theoretically) prevent tampering. The cars were lightweight: the minimum weight was less than 1600 pounds. – so the force didn’t have to carry much. Nevertheless, you would push the steering wheel and dent the floorboards around the accelerator pedal, pushing the car forward, trying to coax every extra bit of power you could find and move forward on the straights.

Lubricants were not regulated, so all kinds of synthetic combinations were tried to get some extra speed from reduced friction. Then the engines deliberately started running at a low oil level to make further progress. Because engines weren’t built for low oil levels and lightweight motor oils like prepared engines, the most adventurous racers started popping engines like popcorn.

But the dumbest move? Loosening and machining wheel bearings to reduce drivetrain friction. These cars would race down the straights like 1950s Ramblers, wandering around the track as they wobbled within the slope of the first loosened and then loosely held wheel bearings. And they drove almost the same way. The faster they got, the worse they actually felt. Teams would do anything to gain an edge in Formula Go-Slow.

Submitted by: jrhmobile

Manual boost controller on my T5 XC70.. jumping a line and closing the wastegate while on the highway. Providing enough power to turn on the traction control light at highway speeds was pretty cool (very) briefly, but changing my 5-cylinder to a 4-cylinder wasn’t ideal.

Submitted by: 242_Flathood

In high school my friend had a EC hatch that we decided we would make quickly.

Being broke in high school, we couldn’t afford to buy parts overnight from Japan, but his father did have a shed full of old PVC and tin plumbing pipes.

That poor citizen got an air system that Red Green would have been proud of with the duct tape and wood screw construction.

It was about a month before the catastrophe, which in retrospect wasn’t that bad for what went into it.

Submitted by: JaredOfLondon

I put a smaller pulley and belt on my supercharged 3800 V6 in my 1999 Buick Riviera. I took it with me to tune the ECM. The song cost $1000. The hardware cost maybe $15. It gave me maybe 50 hp from stock… And the car spent most of its time going to and from work, in heavy traffic, never reaching much more than 40 mph.

Submitted by: Old_SLAAB_Guy