Hot Tuner 2016 is GO!

You are probably familiar with the expression ‘Murphy was an optimist’.

Hot Tuner 2016 is brought to you by Valvoline SynPower

It means, of course, that sometimes things go so wrong that not even the most dire predictions nor the most careful of preparations can allow for it. Which brings me to Hot Tuner 2016.

When it comes to the event in question, Murphy wasn’t just being an optimist. Nope, old mate Murph was off his face on meth and Jack Daniel’s and was driving a V8-powered Leyland Marina on nitrous the wrong way up a freeway, towing a box-trailer full of burning saints. Sometimes things go wrong but stay within normal parameters. Hot Tuner went wrong bigger than that. Rolf Harris-wrong.

Now, I’m all for low-lining – you know, making large of what little you have – but to get to the Sigma we had to walk right past his V8 Calais. So I dunno…

Anyway, by the time we were rolling into Sin City, the first few drops were being smeared all over the Sigma’s windscreen.

Now, I’m not necessarily the cautious type (God knows), but I have, in previous years, expressed a certain degree of apprehension about driving cars like the ones that turn up at Hot Tuner, what with their horsepower in multiples of 100 and the fact that, while I know and trust some of those tuners present (and, therefore, the quality of their work), some of them I would not know if they stood up in my Weet-Bix.

This has always made me a bit leery, especially since that time a few years back when a hot-rodded Falcon turbo tried to fence itself (and Luffy) at 200-plus when it shat a coolant hose and spun on its own snot.

In any case, we managed to find just enough dry-track time to run figures on all the cars. Oh, except for one of them. Yep, every time I went near the driver’s seat of the Streetfighter Mustang, Murph intervened, the heavens opened one more time and we wheeled it back to the staging lane. So, scratch the dragstrip, then.

Surely things will be better on the dyno, right? Well, you’d think so, given that the bugger is indoors for a start. But, no, it seems Old Murph was still screaming up the freeway in his Marina. See, in the interests of parity and fairness, we always insist that the tuner cars turn up to Hot Tuner with an empty-ish fuel tank.

The alarm bells started ringing when Rob Herrod’s Mustang wheeled onto the dyno and gave the rollers a quick round trip. Nothing sounded wrong, but when we looked at the dyno sheet, it was clear that all was not well.

In fact, about 100-kiloWatts-down not well. Now I’ve seen the original dyno sheet for this car, and somewhere between 80 and 100kW had just vanished. I quizzed Rob Herrod about it. Was the car strapped down correctly?

See, our engine management system keeps a real close eye on the fuel. If it sees that something’s not right, it doesn’t just wind back the spark, it sends everything into a preservation mode. And that’s what I reckon has happened here. We’ve seen it before at home on customers’ cars who turn up with crook fuel. We drain the tank, refuel the thing and bang, the horsepower is back.”

Herrod’s fears were more or less confirmed within 20 minutes when the VCM C63 – itself with a sensitive preservation mode – lost about the same amount of grunt. We’re having the fuel tested as we speak, but it looks as though it’s low-octane stuff with a few ‘additives’ to make it behave like Premium. Murphy shifts the Marina into overdrive.

So that’s what we’re going to have to go with here. Not perfect, but still some kind of representation. And if nothing else, it should remind us that Hot Tuner is more about letting you lot know who can do what for whatever car you might own, rather than a duke-’em-out session of tuner versus tuner. Which is lucky, right? Damn straight.

Rent-a-racer

Enter Australian GT and DJR Penske endurance driver Tony D’Alberto. Luffy’s shoes are about as big as they come for this sort of work, but Tony D filled them admirably. The driving is one thing, but by far the bigger challenge is putting up with MOTOR folks for three days straight.

Wrestling blown rear-drive V8s, dry set-up Golf Rs and a mega-power GT-R around a sodden South Circuit definitely qualifies as being thrown into the deep end but Tony was immediately quick and consistent.

Unlike stunt-driving Luffy, sideways motoring doesn’t come naturally to TD, but his inherent car control came to the fore and was soon sliding around the for the cameras enough to get Today Tonight’s attention (which didn’t happen, fortunately).

Welcome to team MOTOR, Tony.

One rainy parade indeed

IN A perfect world the sun would have been shining, the ambient air temp cool and each of our contenders straining at their dyno ratchet straps with more mumbo than back at the workshop. Unfortunately the reverse was true.

As Morley has alluded, the gods of grunt had smiled upon us too many years a row at Hot Tuner, it seemed, and it was like we had a bad luck deficit to burn through…

First, the fuel. As already explained, with multiple participants concerned over the fuel quality, we took the decision not to include our dyno figures in the outright Hot Tuner rankings, and instead mention them in the write-ups where appropriate alongside workshop figures from the tuners themselves. As they were acquired in totally different conditions, on all manner of dynos and under no supervision by us, they are provided merely for reference and out of interest.

Fortunately the South Circuit developed a very solid, wide and reliable dry line long enough for us to run every car in the same conditions, to our satisfaction, before another downpour. Tony D’Alberto’s comments were from the wet.

Prior to the next Hot Tuner we’ll smear our bodies in Valvoline grease, wear skirts of spark plug leads and do a Shamanistic dance to appease said gods of grunt. Or we could just sacrifice an Ecotec V6.

Who competed in 2016’s Hot Tuner? Here are the contenders.