Some of you may or may not know, but I have a monthly column in Import Tuner magazine called “Question IT”. I have been contributing for about 1.5 years now and there have been a couple different intros and a couple different pictures. Carter at IT says it time to retake the heading picture and I agree. I’m not sure who writes my intro in the heading, but I think this issue has a pretty good intro. It reads:
“Sad news, ladies. Eric Hsu is officially off the market. Turns out last month, when we thought he was building Skylines and developing Cosworth schwag, but he was also secretly tuning some girl’s heart and making wedding arrangements. Looks like he’s finally cracked the female ECU-we’re just glad someone has.
Send your tech questions to Dr. Hsu. Save the rest for Dr. Drew.”
I dig that rhyme in the last sentence BTW although no human male can possibly figure out the female ECU. Anyhow, over the 1.5 years I’ve been answering questions in this column, the quality of the questions have definitely gotten better. It used to take me about 10 minutes to answer the questions because they were pretty dumb. These days it takes me a little bit over several days time because they are actually better quality questions. But for some reason there is one constant in every batch of questions I get from Luke or Scott: engine swaps. WHY THE FUCK DO PEOPLE THINK IT’S SO GOD DAMN EASY TO SWAP ENGINES? People who own anything from Camrys, FDs, MR2s, to fwd Corollas always want to swap engines and ask, “Can I swap engine A into chassis B?” If you are thinking about writing in to ask an engine swap question, don’t. I hate those questions and chances are you’ll never really do the engine swap anyways so let’s stop wasting everybody’s time and skip it. Proper engine swaps take a lot of time, skill, labor, and most of all passion. I’m not saying it’s impossible but if you’ve never removed and replaced a stock engine, wired up an ECU, and done some light fabrication, then don’t even remotely consider doing it yourself. Engine swaps are not a casual thing. In fact, think of it as a heart transplant. Why does a surgeon charge $600,000 for a heart transplant? For the same reasons why a good fabrication shop will charge your $25,000 to put a RB26DETT in your Corolla: IT’S A BITCH.
Otherwise I enjoy contributing to the column for the most part. The cash can never either.