WE ARE ALL SINNERS. Regardless of how much we strive to lead righteous and honorable lives, we still cannot refrain from committing sins. Even when it comes to something as important as building a vehicle, we fall short of perfection. After years of learning things the hard way, we have come to understand the seven deadly performance sins. Now we are about to give you the upper hand in avoiding these seven sins. Once you are aware of these seven performance sins, there is no excuse for committing any of them.

PRIDE

Pride is the excessive belief in one’s own abilities. In high school, I committed the sin of pride because I was confident that I could swap in my own camshaft. After all, I had done my own engine tune-up and had even rebuilt the carburetor myself. I wouldn’t need help on something as easy as installing a camshaft. My pride got the best of me as I spun a cam bearing in the process of the install. This resulted in a loss of oil pressure and subsequent engine damage. The penance for my pride was to spend the next two weeks rebuilding the entire engine. Chances are that you are not the best engine builder or tuner in the world. There will always be someone with more experience that’s just a question away. If you truly want to learn how build your engine properly, ask someone with experience to look over your shoulder as you do it. You may even consider asking your parents for advice. They may surprise you. While they may have never wrenched on a Japanese twin-cam engine before, they may have held a wrench a few times and can guess with experience faster than you can figure out through trial and error.

ENVY

Envy is the desire for another persons traits, status, abilities or situation. If you’ve ever wished that you were the rich kid, or the popular kid, or even the smart kid, then you’ve been guilty of envy. Understanding the following will get you far in life: All of the people that you envy probably feel just as insecure as you. When Adam Saruwatari first showed up to an import race in 1996, the envy was thick. Here was a racer that no one had grown up with. He was from California farmlands and had never been part of the SoCal street racing scene. However, his first attendance at a major event found him in professional racing gear with a full support team to back him up. It begged the question, “Who does this guy think he is?” He had a quick car, heavy attention from the media, the support of his family and a level of professionalism that was unknown to import drag racing at the time. Like many other racers, I was initially envious of Adam. That envy eventually turned into respect when I witnessed Adam working on his own car and getting dirty in spite of the high-dollar support that he had, simply because he wanted to win like the rest of us. It became obvious then that he was more similar to us than any of us would have admitted; in the end, we all sweated beneath the same sun.

GLUTTONY

Gluttony is the desire to consume more than one requires. Performance gluttony will have you buying parts for your car that do nothing but drain your bank account. That $6000 big brake system might have twice the rotor surface and clamping force of your factory unit, but the $700 rotor and pad upgrade may actually be better suited for your application and deliver the same level of usable performance benefit.

To avoid being a glutton, the first thing you need to do when you begin a project build is to establish your goal. If your goal is to run 11-seconds in your 370Z, you may calculate that you’d need a solid 500 horsepower. Around this criteria, purchase the parts that get the job done right at the best price possible. You won’t need titanium connecting rods and a dry-sump oiling system.

LUST

Lust is an inordinate craving for pleasures. In performance terms, boost pressure, nitrous oxide and RPM are the pleasures of the engine. Running high boost pressure, hitting the button on the nitrous oxide system or revving an engine to no end would put a smile on any performance enthusiast’s face. The pull of the human body back into the driver’s seat is a pleasure indeed. It’s acceptable to crave pleasure as this alone does not equal lust. It is only when the craving comes at an elevated level or starts to interfere with your daily life that lust begins to creep in. Try to keep tabs on your lust. When you give in to lust behind the wheel, you can put your engine and your life in danger.

WRATH (ANGER)

When you lose the love and look to fury, wrath or anger is the end result. Once you give in to anger, there is no turning back. Anger can occur for a multitude of reasons. Often, it surfaces when one is faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges or when facing certain defeat. Finding horsepower and making your car go quicker and faster requires dedication. Along the way, you will inevitably meet challenges to this goal. Whether it is a faulty product or just a bad tank of low-octane gas, you will encounter obstacles that push your patience to the limit. Nuts will rust in place. Vacuum lines will develop microscopic cracks. Bolts will fall into previously unknown crevices in your engine bay. Countering with an anger response will not solve any of these problems. It may, in fact, make things worse and cause more problems instead of allowing you to logically and rationally come up with a solution.

GREED

Greed is the desire for material wealth or gain. Greed is very similar to envy and gluttony except that it is more of a yearning for material goods instead of wanting to be in someone else’s shoes or just wanting more than you need. Wanting, in itself, is not necessarily a bad thing. Wanting for the sole sake of having excessive amounts without need is greed.

SLOTH

Sloth is the avoidance of physical work. There is not going to be any increase in the performance of your vehicle unless you are ready to do some physical work. While not everyone is blessed with a good mechanical aptitude, your abilities will never improve if you rely on others for every aspect of your vehicle’s tuning and maintenance. At the very least, learn how to maintain the engine yourself. Change your oil, get serious about car care and change a timing belt or two.

H.O.T.F.O.O.D.

On top of the original seven sins applied to performance, there are several other items to watch out for. These can be remembered with the pneumonic device “HOT FOOD” - Heat, Overkill, Timing, Fuel-Lean, Overboost, Over-Revving and Detonation.

HEAT

Heat is a form of energy that results from combustion and friction. Controlling heat is paramount to having an engine run reliably, efficiently and at peak power. The engine’s cooling system must be functioning properly to reject all of the wasted heat from the energy conversion processes present in the engine. When heat cannot be controlled, components are subject to stresses and strains that are not within their designed operating conditions. Some components may physically change in dimension at elevated temperatures. While some components may just crack or expand, other components may melt. If you have doubled the horsepower from your factory powerplant, consider doubling the efficiency of your cooling system. A high performance radiator with high-flow fans is money well spent. You can also consider an oil-cooler system. Often overlooked, the engine’s oil is not just a lubrication media, it is also a cooling media. Oil coolers can significantly reduce oil temperatures providing substantial increases to the life of valve springs and engine bearings.

OVERKILL

Overkill relates to the process of purchasing a product that is not in line with the overall project goal. Committing this sin may lead to catastrophic bank account or engine failure. If your goal is to have a 500-horsepower, daily-driven STi, then a T88 turbo would definitely be overkill. Always consider the final objective of your project when purchasing parts. If the part is not necessary, we recommend that you do not purchase it. You may need the money for many unforeseen parts and events in the future.

TIMING

Timing of the ignition event is critical to proper engine operation. Too much spark timing advance is a sin. When the spark fires too early, two undesirable scenarios can result. At the very least, power will be reduced because the pressure curve in the cylinder is not optimized to generate peak power. In this case, the pressure may not rise as high or may occur too early to be generated into peak power at the flywheel. In other cases, too much timing advance can lead to another sin, detonation. To avoid this timing issues, be sure to set the spark timing to its optimum setting. Unless you have access to a dyno and knock monitoring equipment, a setting within a few degrees of the stock setting will deliver the peak performance in most cases. Remember that gasoline octane ratings and burn rates will affect how much spark advance can safely be run. Additionally, compression ratio, boost pressure (forced-induction applications), bore size, combustion chamber design, spark plug location and piston speed will all influence how much timing advance the engine will tolerate. On vehicles equipped with a knock sensor, be sure to check that it is functioning correctly.

FUEL-LEAN

Fuel-lean is the condition that results when too much air and not enough fuel are put into the engine. The fuel supply chain starts at the tank and ends at the injector. Along the way the pump, regulator, lines and ECU have to all be up to the task of ensuring that the proper amount of fuel is available. When engines operate in a fuel-lean environment, combustion temperatures become excessive and many problems can result. Engines can overheat, experience preignition, or even become victims of detonation.

OVERBOOST

Overboost refers to the condition that can occur on forced-induction vehicles. Overboost results when intake manifold boost pressure exceeds the safe operating level. Overboost can often lead to detonation and a fuel-lean condition. However, even when overboost doesn’t lead to those problems, overboost can still generate internal stresses in the engine that cannot be handled.

If you took a bone-stock D16 engine and turbocharged it, it would probably perform well up to the 250 horsepower level with proper tuning and boost settings. Crank the boost up to generate 350 horsepower with a good air-fuel ratio and proper timing curve and you will probably end up with a hole in the side of the block when a factory connecting rod gives way. To avoid this sin, control the boost. Use a quality wastegate, a quality boost controller and, most importantly, be sure to use quality boost lines that are routed away from sources of heat that can cause the hose to fail.

OVER-REV

Over-rev is the condition where the engine operating speeds is pushed beyond the design limit. This sin is solely the result of driver error. Hence, it is also the easiest to control and avoid. Over-revving can lead to valve float, broken valve springs and other mechanical issues. To avoid this problem, a rev limiter should be installed on your vehicle. Also, be sure to follow the cam manufacturer’s recommendations for valve springs and installation specifications. All of these valvetrain components need to be properly matched to ensure reliable high-rpm operation.

DETONATION

Detonation is probably the sin most often responsible for serious engine damage on modern performance vehicles. Detonation refers to the chaotic and undesired explosion of the air-fuel charge in the cylinder (the desired process in the cylinder is the controlled-burn or combustion of the air-fuel mixture). The result of detonation is a rapid pressure rise in the cylinder that often leads to head gasket failure, bearing failure or other component failures. Detonation can be avoided by using a fuel that meets the octane requirements of the engine and by running the appropriate amount of ignition spark timing.