nice post greg, you have nailed that one.
i have kinda taken a backs seat in this debate so far and just enjoyed reading others opinions and experiences.
i myself have been in the starlet game for over 3 and a half years and in the time have learnt a great deal. right back to when i 1st got the car and had a fun time working how how to convert it to manual without any help from such forums like this or even any books. i went down to the local wrecker looked at a manual one and went right guess i need this this and this and ill need to mod this and this to make it work. and then i would go and do all that and bumped into a few problems so had to go back again and again to look at it untill i got it right. took me 3 months to find all the parts and teach myself how everything worked and operated. thats where i started and now im only a hair away from being a fully qualified diesel mechanic and rebuilding 14L cummins and cat engines every second month or so.
my point here is that when info cant be found on how something works or how far it can be pushed you have to go outside the square as it were and look deeper than reading from an instruction manual and push the boundary's a bit. and thats what i think has happened here. obviously in the UK there is a certain path which almost all performance aimed builds take. and i think that you are all very lucky to be able to buy affordable off the shelf kits to acheive the desired gains. in other country's such as malta aus and here in nz just to name a few of the big list of country's that have some very intriguing and fast set ups, we dont have this luxury so we have gone our own different ways to try develop our cars which doesnt mirror you own. which is where the problems start. one of the biggest differences there is the forged versus non stock internals debate. over here it would cost over 3k to forged an engine by the time you have got your new rods and pistons and then bought the engine kit and payed someone to build it. now thats about the most any of the cars get spent on them in total over here (besides the few very fortunate people who have deep pockets and have done mental things. such as the highly debated 380bhp glanza,which i have driven). so you can see where im going. the whole reason the stock bottom end thing happeneds is there just isnt the money there to try and make things safer for want of a better word. we just make do with what toyota has given us and start on our journey of hunting for more power. so because we have taken for granted that toyota (one of the best car manufacturers in the world) knows how to build a good engine to start us off with. esspecially one with a turbo on the side from factory.
(no manufacturer will make an engine that can only cope with what they have allowed it to produce from factory or there would be major reliability issues. a case of this is the cummin 504 diesel v8 engines found very common in the 60s and 70s. they produced 240hp fron stock at 3300rpm. and then at 3400rpm they would blow to a million peaces.)
we go on our merry way with trying to extract the most power possible within our means.
for some people this is just spending 1500bux on a custom td04l set up which is the most common way to go. manifold down pipe, exhaust, front mount a boost controller and a rrfpr. then there are those that want all out power for drags or circuit use, and just keep going and going with upgrades untill the engine gives way. now this bring us back to where i began almost.
the nz record was set by a guy who started out with his car back in 99 and stedily moddifyed it (in his back garden) and turbo set ups came then went as each goal was achieved and the next was hatched. but one thing stayed the same because it hadnt caused any problems. and that was the bottom end. he had purchased a set of forged internals for the day which he thought would always be round the corner when the engine would expire, but it never came. bigger turbos and more boost was added untill the point where he got to the point where he was the fastest in the land and he still hadnt touched the bottom end bar a refreshed 5e with 4efte pistons.
so thats how most of these 'black magic' as you would call them engines have come about. people just trying new things and each time thinking it will blow sooner or later but they get to that stage and think, shit it may take a bit more. so they try it and it still works.
i have personally built many 4es and 5e's in my time. inc one for a mate which was running a t3t4 turbo (this was a street/drag car) which was road tuned and then dynod to 170+wkw on a fully stock 4efte. and i have yet to see one die because of a weakness in the original parts that wasnt caused by something being asked too much of them ie to much ignition timing with mamoth amounts of boost and, not enough fuel or insufficient cooling.
i have almost finnished building a stock rebuilt 5e with 4e pistons for a good friend that will be running a td04 or 5 turbo and pushing power levels of around 150-170kw and this is for a track car. and it will last the distance if the things that have been learnt by those pioneers and the fundamentals from those who know how an engine operates and functions are followed.
my own car is running a stock high compression 9.8:1 5efhe with a ct9 on the side of it. last season my aims were 110wkw and a 13sec 0-400m. it wasnt easy but i did it on low boost. this season im going for low 13s and ill be pushing a high comp 5e further than has ever been done in this country at least (some of the guys in the us will easily eclips me, but they have bigger budgets). ill be doing a members garage and detials will be added as the build progresses. i dont know how far ill get before i break something. i had expected to make the high comp engine implode well before i even got to this point but the more i think and learn about how it works and the more i acheive from personal experiance there more i think and know that more can be extracted and achieved by this little inferior engine.
on another note: this is about the only thing that i think has been posted and wasnt debated or hasnt been properly answered.
thats all Good have no problem with that and the 5E Motor is a great engine for track use
But what my arguement is simple a 4E stock motor running a HUGE Turbo is useless simple as will not be any good for DRAG or track way too laggy and ur Powerband will be almost no exsistant (narrow)
u can get what ever Power reading u want but i put it to you a Stock 4E motor running 380bhp will have no Torque and NARROW powerband!! absolutley Pointless
the part here that i would like to pick out is that of you saying a 'stock 4e with a huge turbo will have no torque and a narrow powerband'. now obviously this was during the debate about how the forged engines are the only ones capable of doing such things. so what i say to you is,
the stock 4e bottom end in many cases has a higher compression ratio than that of almost any forged engine build and any that i have seen on this site. an engine with lower comp ratio is obviously going to handle more boost, but higher boost doesnt mean its going to have more torque just more max hp output. so a stock 4e will have more torque than a forged engine of which you were hypothetically comparing it to by a long way. and where there is more torque also means your going to have bigger power band.
obviously the igniton map and rpm limit will also have a bit part to play with this also
disclaimer
is some of this doesnt make seance thats because its been a very long day.
and if i dont reply right away to any comments/questions to what i have expressed i will do when i have the chance. on slow internet here and i have allot of work on
cheers
Ryan
