I must say that the tiny hula dancer I bought to adorn my car’s dashboard was certainly money well spent. It’s perhaps not however, the most bang for the buck auto update that I could have undertaken.
Most people just can’t leave well enough alone and when it comes to our cars and trucks, the urge to splurge and make mods to make them our own is almost impossible to resist. That’s why we go to lengths to add cold air intakes and aftermarket wheels. What we want to know today is, what you think is the best use of those modification dollars. What do you think is the biggest bang for the buck auto update?
Image: sub5zero.com
Hooniverse Asks: What's the Biggest Bang for Your Buck Car or Truck Upgrade?
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Craigslist.com? After too much focus on the bang, I drive a minivan. The smart update would be to find something else. Doing it right?
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I wish my car were as fast as a modern minivan. It might be able to turn, too, if you take out a bunch of seats and spares, and find something to fix the understeer.
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Any time I need to haul a big load and have removed the middle seats and folded the rears into the floor (lowering the center of gravity and moving that mass to behind the rear axle instead of over it), I have a ball driving the Odyssey superleggera. It’s noticeably flatter and more neutral in the corners, and can take them at greater speed. It’s really just a thick rear sway bar away from really being able to dance.
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Wow, you even provided an ontopic conclusion – van swag FTW. In my Stream, the seats can’t be taken out, but it does have a tight steering and a strange willingness to tackle corners. Just that nobody believes me until I let them drive…
@Leroooy, you say “car”, but from your description I’m thinking:
http://g.api.no/obscura/pub/728x1000r/03111/1267219117000_Tide__buss__kollek_3111187728x1000r.jpg
(Notice the speed-induced blurriness of the image.)
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Tires, and wheels along with them if you’re stuck with 14×7’s running 225/60’s from the factory like me. Talk about sidewall flex and lack of tire choices…
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One of the best things the PO of my 300SD was to upgrade to newer 15″ Merc wheels. Not only do they look better on the car (the 14″ bottlecaps it came with from the factory look SO TINY), they actually make tires cheaper, as 14″ wheels, and thus tires, have largely run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible, while 15″ tires are still largely available, and therefore cheaper.
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I got my first car with crappy tires from the prior owner. When they wore out after several years, I allowed the mechanic to replace them on the cheep. Fourteen months later, when the Chinese tires he put on were flat bald, I decided to get longer lasting tires.
My primary criteria was longevity. Everything else was gravy. They cost less than twice as much as the Chinese ones, but they’ve lasted more than twice as long, so far.
But the difference in ride quality? Small bumps that rattled my teeth before disappeared. I could take an exit ramp above 15 mph without the tires squealing. Road noise was so much less. I didn’t get iced into parking spaces in the winter anymore.-
I honestly think that tires are the last thing to cheap out on with cars. You’ve heard it before, but it’s an area equivalent to four flat man hands that rolls the dice over how you perform, or wether you survive in a critical situation. All the crappy cars I’ve owned have always had the best, most suitable summer and winter tires. I bought my beloved and long-gone 1971 Volvo 145 for less than i paid for two sets of tires…
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Longer wearing tires = less cost for changing tires:
Three sets of 30 to 35,000 mile tires at $30/tire to change = $360 versus the $120 once for a 100,000 mile set.
Also if you can safety oversize your tires within the 3% recommended max safety margin without turning and suspension interference, this also helps.
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Smaller sidewalls need to be sustained by a sufficient upgrade of the suspension, imo. For sporty cars, there may be some play still,as in 1″. Putting 18” on a car that came on 15” originally…not convinced, and not a bargain.
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A bang for a buck? Sounds like a hooker to me.
http://www.andysautosport.com/images/brand/big_hooker.jpg-
If by bang, we’re referring to the rhythmic bangs that make up a V8’s giblet-rumbling soundtrack, then headers are absolutely the best.
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Back in the days of troglodytes, pull-top beer cans and pushrod V8s, the best bang for buck performance mod was a cam change. $100 and an afternoon of your time would make a world of difference. The only problem is that change is just like Pringles or crack cocaine – no one can eat just one. Soon you’re swapping heads, exhaust, superchargers, when will the madness end?
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As stock cam profiles have gotten better and better on modern engines, the main benefit in changing them is not an increase in power, but to shift around the power curve to suit the needs of the vehicle. While this is nothing new (“getcha one’a dem RV bumpsticks if you’re gonna be towing!”), it seems like manufacturers are getting more use out of each engine family with more precise cam tuning.
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Self-upgrade.
Join your nearest SCCA chapter and go run some Solo II autoX. It’s a great way to learn where the dynamic limits of your vehicle are in a controlled and relatively-safe environment.
When you learn to control your vehicle at its stock limits, only then should you be concerned with increasing those limits, especially since certain upgrades can dramatically change the behavior of a car, and how progressively the limits present themselves. Generally, the higher the performance, the sharper the razor’s edge.-
Agreed. I’ve joined the BMWCCA and will be participating in my first HPDE in September. I can’t wait to get it on the track with an instructor to really explore its limits.
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I first tried it out in college in my 1996 Geo Prizm with the 1.6L and the 3spd auto. Literally grandma’s car. The way it carried its inside rear tire 6″ off the ground through any sharp, low speed turns was quite the crowd pleaser.
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When I showed up to a Volvo training event in my crappy ’77 242*, I wasn’t allowed to enter the ice track in the car. But all the then-fancy machinery impressed me dearly – I was among the first non-employees/-journalists to try the mk2 S40, and the V70R was a rocket. I promptly stalled my orange pride trying to get off the parking lot.
http://home.arcor.de/ungua/hemsedal/images/001.jpg
http://home.arcor.de/ungua/hemsedal/images/005.jpg
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You don’t know what you don’t know until you have the pros show you how you’ve been doing it wrong. -
When my best fried and I were broke and in college (seriously, I ate oatmeal, peanuts and rice for 2 weeks while I waited for a pay check) we worked our butts off to keep his car running cleanly. He had a 92 VW Jetta Ecodiesel.
Surprisingly easy little car to work on, but the mpg would swing massive amounts if something wasn’t running correctly. Lower mpg equals higher $, so we were back to using elbow grease.
The best bang for your buck is a Mechanic’s guide to your car and a decent mechanic’s toolset. It makes everything else possible.-
As a coda to the mechanics guide I would pose that having full, picture viewing access to an enthusiast forum for your make/model is the next item behind the mechanics guide in paper.
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Shocks, really good shocks.
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For most used cars, as many of us are wont to buy, just OE replacement shocks work wonders.
I replaced the OE shocks on the minivan with KYB Excel-G at 115k miles after I noticed uncontrolled rebound over a speed bump. These struts/shocks don’t claim any performance advantage, just restoration of OE handling, but that made a world of difference.
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Air conditioning. If its broke – fix it, if it didn’t come with one – install one. Air conditioning improves the driving experience on a hot humid day, has a calming effect on the nerves, and in some instances improves ones sex life. In Texas, as a teenager, girls didn’t ask what it would do in the quarter mile but if the air conditioning worked.
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I’d have to say tires. Years ago I leased a 1996 Ford Escort, when it was time to turn in the lease, I didn’t have enough tread on the front tires to pass the post-lease inspection. Well, I wasn’t going to give them a brand new set of tires, so I bought something used, which happened to be a set of Goodyear Eagle GT-something or others. That car never handled so well, I wish I had got them when the car was new.
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Came here to say that. Old tires, mediocre tires, will ruin any investment in suspension bits right away.
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For a Volvo it has to be iPd anti-sway bars.
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The same for 1975 and 1976 MGBs.
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Restoring/refurbishing you car. Upgrading the condition of the entire car really helps the resale value.
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Tires & let the motor breathe better — a less restrictive intake filter & exhaust.
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I’m extremely skeptical of most of the low-restriction filters out there. They’re generally also high-dust-passage filters. (The kit pictured above appears to also be a hot-air intake.)
For example: on this test, the K&N was among the worst at everything except initial restriction.
http://www.nicoclub.com/archives/kn-vs-oem-filter.html -
tires and wheels. I’ve stopped adding cone filters…it makes me floor the gas just to hear the noise…all the time…which ends up burning up some valves lol…
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Put the money into yourself and practice off-road riding on a bike or motorbike. Nothing gives you a better education of how grip and braking works than a low MU surface with your own skin at stake. It translates straight to the road.
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