If you just hotted up your Civic with a giant turbo and intercooler, you’re going to be tempted to take the little VTEC monster to the dyno to see what you’ve gained. Before you do that, though, for god’s sake: don’t forget to tighten your damn lug nuts.
Thong Pham, who owns ASP Tuning Dynamics—a shop near Fresno California—dyno tested his friend’s modded 1993 Civic last night, but things didn’t go so hot. Of all the recent bolt-ons (including the forward-facing turbo, intercooler and headers you see in the picture above), the simplest bolt-on of them all, a wheel, fell off during the dyno pull:
It’s not a great video, but you can barely see the wheel fly by at the top left of the screen. Here’s another angle:
Pham told me he looked to the left just as the wheel came off, and saw it just sitting there doing a burnout before it finally rolled away. There wasn’t much damage to his shop or his dyno, and the Civic actually came out relatively unscathed as well, thanks to its stiff suspension. The lug studs needed a bit of straightening, but that was it:
Considering that, according to Pham, the Civic made over 600 horses at the wheels during that pull (clearly, the engine’s internals have also been beefed up) at 28 psi of boost, and that he was planning to go up to 35 psi, this turned out about as well as anyone could have hoped.
Lug nuts man, just tighten them.