COILOVER SUSPENSION
Back in the good ol' days, when people walked to school, in the snow, for four miles, blindfolded and barefoot, we also lowered our cars by the simplest of means. Either you lowered them with springs or cut the stock springs, resulting in ultimate or not-so-ultimate handling. Shocks with adjustable damping to match were an added bonus but often came at a cost that didn't agree with many pocketbooks. And like magic, suspension companies started to produce the coilover, which integrated a threaded perch on the shock body that allowed for adjustability of the spring height. What it offered at first was the ability to drive around at heights that were safe and law-abiding yet could be slammed with a few twists or turns of a coilover wrench. Adjustable damping was also incorporated, giving road racers plenty of options when it came to game time. Today, companies like Tein www.tein.com and Tanabe www.tanabe-usa.com offer electronically controlled coilovers, which let you set the damping at the touch of a button. Alternatives also include the coilover sleeve, a pseudo-coilover that allows you to use a shock of your choice but still lets you raise or lower a car at will.
BALL BEARING TURBO
Turbocharging is no new science but the ball-bearing turbo certainly pushed our engines to new limits. A turbo works by using the exhaust flow from an engine to spin a turbine, which then acts like an air pump, forcing air out through the compressor side and back into your engine allowing it to burn more air and fuel. Most traditional turbos rely on a "fluid bearing" to support the turbine shaft, which entails a thin layer of oil constantly being pumped around the shaft, cooling it and reducing friction. However, you can increase the efficiency of a turbo by equipping it with ball bearings instead, which will allow you to use a smaller, lighter turbine shaft and ultimately lets the turbo accelerate more quickly, reducing turbo lag to a minimum. Companies like Garrett www.turbobygarrett.com, HKS www.hksusa.com or GReddy www.greddy.com offer a variety of ball-bearing turbochargers for different ranges of power.
FRONT WHEEL DRIVE WHEELIE BAR
When brothers Ron and Ed Bergenholtz www.nittochampion.com pulled up to the lights at the March '99 Battle of the Imports, everyone said that it wouldn't work. "It," of course, was a wheelie bar. For a front-wheel drive drag car it shouldn't have worked, seeing how only RWDs were using them with proven success. But a Honda? What most people didn't realize was the wheelie bar actually helped to keep the load on the front wheels, giving the best traction results anyone had seen up until that point. This allowed Ed to drive his CRX to consistent low-10s and a long-running streak as the fastest full-chassis Honda in the world. For the next Battle, everyone and their mothers came with a wheelie bar, but Ed was the only one who ran a 9.78. The rest, as they say, is history.
ADJUSTABLE CAM GEARS
After adding basic bolt-ons to any engine, you can always extract more power by using electronics. Sometimes there's hidden horsepower and if you know where to look, you can use that to your advantage, too. Look at your valve cover-now, we know you can't physically "see" your cam(s), but if you could, that's where all that untapped power sits waiting to be extracted. By advancing or retarding cam timing, you can put that power into play, but since the factory cam gears are set to one setting only, it's pretty hard to pull that off. With an adjustable cam gear and a dyno, you can make these fine adjustments on the fly with precision tuning.