The Evolution of Fast and Furious

The new Fast and Furious movie is coming out on May 24th, and so in the spirit of the movie I wanted to talk about the evolution of franchise.

When the first movie came out I was in college and was swamped with homework, trying to balance a social life, etc. I knew vaguely of the movie but that was about it. It wasn't until the movie came out on DVD that I saw it and was intrigued by its portrayal (however unrealistic) of the tuner world. I had experience modifying cars and was adding onto my car at the time, so that made the movie that much more interesting to me. Of course the cars in the movie looked pretty ridiculous, but that was a thing among some tuners at the time (kind of like with donks now). Some of those zany looks were a way to ruffle people's feathers and for the tuners to thumb their nose at them. And of course the scene where the Supra "smokes" the Ferrari further infuriated many automotive purists that solemnly and foolishly believed a Ferrari would win any race by virtue of the prancing pony slapped on it.

That first movie inspired many, many poser racer bois to start slapping huge aluminum wings and coffee can exhausts onto the economy car that used to be mommy's. In a lot of ways it cheapened the tuning scene. This cheapening, I feel, became even worse with the completely cartoonish and disappointing second movie, 2 Fast 2 Furious, which I unfortunately saw on opening night (complete with a Supra car show in the parking lot). Anyone who had a modified car that was not a Corvette or better came under quite a bit of fire from all over the place. We were the cause of idiots who raced on busy city streets, we were the source of the stolen car parts market (never mind that the market existed before the movies), cops tailgated you on the road for no reason and so forth.

Then my project car was totaled out by some complete idiot driver, plus I was married and had a kid. So I stopped really playing with cars out of necessity. The third Fast and Furious movie came out, Tokyo Drift, and I didn't see that one until it came out on DVD. Honestly it was an improvement on the horrible second movie, but like the two previous movies it still leaned heavily toward tuner cars or "ricers" as some people are fond of calling them. The series introduced the world to the drifting movement, which then inspired all kinds of idiot kids trying to drift on roads or in busy public parking lots which of course often ended badly (just like in the movie).

It wasn't until the fourth movie that the franchise took an interesting turn. Sure there were some tuner cars in it, but instead of just one or two American muscle cars there were several. Why nobody tapped into the muscle car scene before baffles me. The new movie brought a different dimension to the series, and it was a huge success. The fifth movie built on that momentum, plus introduced some exotic vehicles (like the Koenigsegg CC) to make even more people feel included.

So the series has evolved quite a bit. The one major scene or segment I feel hasn't been truly represented is the European tuning market, specifically the Germans. It looks like the cars in the sixth movie will include some British speed demons, but why aren't there GTIs, a C63 AMG, M6 or even an S60R? There have been a few Euro vehicles in the series, but most of them have fared pathetically, like Jesse's Jetta in the first movie.

Maybe there will be a seventh movie (I think they're going to keep making them until Vin Diesel is behind the wheel of a Little Rascal). And maybe in the seventh movie we will finally see a bunch of German muscle cars. That would be fun. The evolution of the series has kept it going, because if in the fourth movie there were just a bunch of newer tuner cars with a rainbow of paint jobs I think that would have been the death of it all. So if anyone involved in the production of the Fast and Furious movies reads this, you should go for some German flavoring in the next movie; plenty of us would pay to see that.

The Dreaded Exhaust Back Pressure

I remember the first time I saw a tuner's huge tailpipe. I'm pretty sure it was on a Civic and was at least large enough to fit a small cantaloupe inside of it. It was intriguing and almost laughable at the same time. I quickly learned from someone that the idea behind having a huge exhaust system on a car is to allow for the freer flow of the exhaust gases from the engine block with the aim of increasing power output. 


Anyone who has ever been to a racetrack knows that race cars have extremely loud exhausts. Why? They lack any restrictions in them. Your street legal exhaust system comes with sound dampeners as well as a catalytic converter to help reduce emissions and in turn air pollution. If you take all of that away, you remove the things that are slowing down the flow of gases.

Since you cannot legally remove your catalytic converter, and in most areas it is illegal to remove all of the sound dampening devices from your car's exhaust if you drive on the road at all, some car tuners have tried to work around this by slapping on dramatically larger exhaust systems. A fair amount of large pickup trucks do the same thing. 

Anything that restricts the flow of exhausts from the engine to the muffler tip is called back pressure. Back pressure can be caused by a number of obstructions, including a clog in the catalytic converter or a collapsed section of a car's double walled exhaust pipe. Too much back pressure kills power output, fuel mileage and can even cause a car's engine to overheat. In cases of extremely high back pressure, a car's engine might stall out.

But there is such a thing as going too large, despite what some tuners think. Exhaust back pressure is a double-edged sword. Too much and it can rob performance, but too little and it can rob performance. Your exhaust system works with suction to remove the exhaust gases from the engine and move them out through the tailpipe. If you relieve all of the back pressure the exhaust gases could be sucked back into the cylinders through the exhaust valves. So outfitting a car with a 1.6-liter four cylinder engine with an exhaust the size of a semi truck's is probably a bad idea.

Measuring your exhaust's pressure is the only way to accurately determine back pressure. The easiest way to do this is with a low pressure gauge. You have to tap into the exhaust system to measure back pressure, which is best done by disconnecting the air pump check valve. For the best accuracy, the check valve needs to connect to the exhaust system before the catalytic converter.