Dammit, I thought I was done here. Evidently not.
Firstly, to answer your questions. Yes, the people who originally started modifying these cars successfully understood the car in it's entirety. There is virtually zero trial and error involved in modern car design and tuning, hasn't been for many years. It's carefully worked out beforehand by Engineers using a thing called math.
Whether the advice you handed out was correct or not isn't the issue. The issue is that you
didn't know. That's the kind of attitude that encouraged owners to make their cars *really* fast in the late 80's by installing a $100 Fuel Cut Defender, a $20 manual boost controller, and pushing the boost up to 20psi on an otherwise stock car. Did it work? Sure. For a week or so, then it popped the engine. Usually badly. Pistons smashed from detonation, melted from super high EGTs, and badly deformed head gaskets. A lot of cars died this way. For that matter, a lot of cars STILL die this way, because that bad advice is still floating around 20 years later.
I don't care if you hand out bad advice as long as you know the consequences, and you warn the members you are talking to about the possible danger. If you don't know the danger, you obviously cannot provide the appropriate warning. This is the tech section, which carries the following rules, clearly posted in a sticky at the top of the section:
IJ.;1082401 said:
Please guys before posting in this section take the time to confirm/verify your information.
Read the entire thread to see what's been tried/suggested already.
There are far too many posts "I've heard" "my buddy said" or just plain incorrect information posted as fact.
This leads to a situation where staff correct the post and the misinformation poster gets all butt hurt and has a cry that he's been hard done by.
Take 5 minutes to do a Web search check the TRSM or read a manual.
If you're NOT sure don't post it.
If someone corrects you thank them for improving your knowledge base.
Ignore this and you will be infracted, ignore it twice and you get a week off to reconsider your posting behaviour.
Furthermore, your initial post was not posted as an idea or an experiment. It was posted as fact, without the knowledge to back it up. To be honest, I'm not really concerned with this specific post - it's the attitude behind it that is worrisome. What are you going to claim isn't needed next? The emergency brake? The heat shields above the catalytic converter? That may sound silly, however, I've seen both removed, and worse, I've seen both destroy a car.
If you're really here to learn, then step up to the plate and do it. Start by learning how to contribute, and how to accept constructive criticism gracefully.
For the most part, if the "old schoolers" poo poo your idea, there's a very good reason. They aren't here to crush your spirit. They are, however, responsible for making sure that the difference between good information and poor information is obvious to everyone. Otherwise, this section, that you want to learn from, would be full of incorrect information, which would make it entirely useless. Ever tried reading a textbook with conflicting information, half of which was outright wrong? Probably not, because teaching from a book like that would be worse than useless. Same idea.
And lastly, you *can* ask what you want. And you can make suggestions, too - just don't try to represent yourself as an expert until such a time as you actually are one.
