In the Backfires section of the new issue with the Dodge Charger on the cover, this guy wrote:
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I sure hope buyers of the Lotus Elise do their homework on the failure rate of the Toyota Celica GT-S drivetrain when put to the test. I owned a 2000 Celica GT-S six-speed for about three years and 65,000 miles. In that time, I went through four motors and two transmissions. Was I hard on the car? You bet. Although I never raced it competitively, I regularly took it to open track events. Two of the motors simply let go under stress at high rpm. One motor blew when I ham-fisted the tranny into second rather than fourth while redlined in third (sounds really amateurish, but it happened to that model all the time). The other engine blew when the guys rebuilding the head forgot to put all the retaining clips on the valves before they fired it up.
I have to say I'd be hesitant to push the motor into the rev range where it makes real power (between 6250 and redline at 8200). I can still hear the shrill clatter of valves in my $23,000 GT-S being tacoed by the pistons. I'd be terrified to hear that same sound from the $40,000 Elise.
Chris Rikli
Lincoln, Nebraska
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So, that's 4 engines and 2 trannies?
Let's count.
1 engine he admits he blew. Probably f-d up the tranny too.
1 was because of dumb techs.
Now, if the guy misshifted once, maybe's he too dumb and too embarrassed to admit in a national magazine that he did more than once. Toyota probably kept covering him under warranty (he said he had a 2000 and Toyota was good about covering blown engines when it wasn't their fault).
That engine is good enough to be in the soon-departed Celi, still-going Vibe and Matrix and now the Elise. It's a world-wide drivetrain. It's not the piece of junk this dip describes.
Maybe it's me, but I think the guy abused his car mainly because he wasn't compitent to drive it. Hamfisted is about the only thing he got right in the letter.
Mike
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I sure hope buyers of the Lotus Elise do their homework on the failure rate of the Toyota Celica GT-S drivetrain when put to the test. I owned a 2000 Celica GT-S six-speed for about three years and 65,000 miles. In that time, I went through four motors and two transmissions. Was I hard on the car? You bet. Although I never raced it competitively, I regularly took it to open track events. Two of the motors simply let go under stress at high rpm. One motor blew when I ham-fisted the tranny into second rather than fourth while redlined in third (sounds really amateurish, but it happened to that model all the time). The other engine blew when the guys rebuilding the head forgot to put all the retaining clips on the valves before they fired it up.
I have to say I'd be hesitant to push the motor into the rev range where it makes real power (between 6250 and redline at 8200). I can still hear the shrill clatter of valves in my $23,000 GT-S being tacoed by the pistons. I'd be terrified to hear that same sound from the $40,000 Elise.
Chris Rikli
Lincoln, Nebraska
------------------------
So, that's 4 engines and 2 trannies?
Let's count.
1 engine he admits he blew. Probably f-d up the tranny too.
1 was because of dumb techs.
Now, if the guy misshifted once, maybe's he too dumb and too embarrassed to admit in a national magazine that he did more than once. Toyota probably kept covering him under warranty (he said he had a 2000 and Toyota was good about covering blown engines when it wasn't their fault).
That engine is good enough to be in the soon-departed Celi, still-going Vibe and Matrix and now the Elise. It's a world-wide drivetrain. It's not the piece of junk this dip describes.
Maybe it's me, but I think the guy abused his car mainly because he wasn't compitent to drive it. Hamfisted is about the only thing he got right in the letter.
Mike
