Believe it or not, you can have a turbo that is too big… Well, perhaps too big is the wrong way to word it. You can have a big turbo that is not matched properly with your engine or even matched properly with itself (size of hotside vs compressor). While this isn’t really an issue for big v8’s or even v6’s really, the problems from this phenomena will be most evident on small displacement turbo 4 cylinders.

On a turbocharged car, the intake is often sized according to the stock turbo from the factory. It will be designed to dampen noise, and fit with relative ease into a certain area of the engine bay. This comes before performance and this is why upgraded intakes are such a huge benefit to making power on a turbocharged car. Smoother tubing with a high flow filter will reduce restriction and make less work for your turbo. However, sometimes even these upgraded stock replacement intakes are not enough.

E85 is no longer a new thing. It has been around a while now but only in the last 8 to 10 years has it really started catching on as a form of race gas. The intended purpose of ethanol based fuels was not for race car, but it has been morphed into that due to its seemingly endless capabilities as a race fuel.

Depending on who you talk to about an upgraded cat back exhaust, some will tell you it is absolutely necessary and others will tell you it isn’t necessary at all. As for me personally, I’m all about reducing back pressure. The easier it is to move air out, the easier it is to get air in… And then you can’t beat the added enjoyment you get from the improved sound, and I don’t think anyone will argue that. So what should you be looking for when picking an upgraded exhaust for your car?

There are many ways to ruin a perfectly good engine, but today, I just want to talk about two of the most violent ones. Detonation and Pre-Ignition, often interchanged and/or used to describe the same thing, are actually quite different things that lead to similar outcomes. They are both referred to as abnormal combustion, and they are extremely bad for your engine. In order to better explain both Detonation and Pre-Ignition, I need to also explain normal combustion.

That is a mouthful, so from now on, I’m going to refer to this as EBCS. But what is a 3 Port EBCS? How is it different than stock? Why is it a good upgrade? Do you really need it? Let’s knock those questions out one by one…