Every car enthusiast has made plans at some point to modify their car. Its a natural choice really, letting you put your own personal touches on your car, and improve the driving and overall characteristics of it to your liking at the same time.
But, plenty of serious modifications are prohibitively difficult for at-home DIY mechanics to carry out. While discovering the reality of how difficult that engine swap or big turbo kit you had planned can be discouraging, plenty of modifications can be done by even the most inexperienced of gearheads out there.
While you won't be turning your daily driver into a full-on race car, smaller modifications shouldn't be overlooked, as a full build based around a series of small improvements can lead to some big results. Even then, carrying out just a few modifications can make a noticeable difference, letting you fall in love with your vehicle all over again.
So read on, to see 10 modifications that are easy enough for any car enthusiast to do, given enough time, and will make a noticeable difference to your car:
10 ECU Flash / Accessport
Your car's engine is managed by a computer called an ECU. Controlling things like fuel injection, spark timing, and more, the stock tune on most ECUs is designed to sacrifice some performance in order to meet emissions and fuel economy regulations.
Flashing a new performance-oriented tune onto your ECU can yield some great power improvements. But, a Cobb Accessport takes it to the next level, allowing you to store multiple tunes, and load them on demand. As well, it can be used as a gauge to monitor all the vital data your ECU is outputting and is extremely simple to install.
9 Hella Supertone Horns
You may have seen them before - the mysterious red discs hiding behind a modified car's grille.
Those are horns, but not just any horns. Unlike your stock, and most likely wimpy sounding horns, Hella Supertones and Sharptones are piercingly loud, registering at up to 118 Decibels. Not only are they easy to install, with just a wiring harness needed to get them working, but they look awesome, and are too loud to ignore.
8 Poly Suspension Bushings
Your car's suspension is made up of several key components, most of which move in turn with the car.
Carrying several thousand lbs of weight while moving is no easy task, and your suspension bushings help carry the load and keep the components secured at the same time. These bushings can wear down over time, and should be replaced eventually, but, upgrading to Poly bushings can dramatically improve the handling of even a brand new car. Beware though, as bushings that are too stiff can make for a harsher ride.
7 Short Throw Shifter
If you drive with a manual transmission, shifter feel is most likely an important factor - after all, a manual transmission's main advantage is feeling connected to your car.
But plenty of stock shifters are either imprecise or have a long throw. Especially on older cars, shift linkages can wear down and give an unsatisfying sloppy feel, potentially leading to missed gears. A short shift kit will shorten the shifter throw, dramatically improve the precision and crisp feeling of your shifts, and won't take more than a few hours to install.
6 Coilover Suspension
While not the easiest thing to install, swapping over to coilover suspension is well worth it and can be done with basic tools and a weekend of free time.
While a good set doesn't come cheap, if you're looking to upgrade your suspension all around, it's well worth it to pay the extra money for a good set. What you get for your money is superior quality and the ability to adjust ride height, damping, and stiffness, letting you dial in your perfect setup on the fly, without having to change out any additional parts.
5 Wheels And Tires
Your wheels and tires are what keeps your car to the road, and transmits power to the ground.
Naturally, a high-quality tire will improve handling and practically all driving characteristics. Wheels too can lead to some improvements in performance, as lightweight alloy wheels reduce the power loss compared to heavy stock ones. Aside from performance gains, there's a massive list of awesome looking wheels that will enhance your car's aesthetic appearance. Changing wheels is easy as well, only requiring jacking the car and removing, then re-installing the lug nuts.
4 Strut Tower Brace
Body roll and flex can seriously hamper your car's handling. Strut tower braces can be a partial solution to this.
While most effective in conjunction with stiffer sway bars and bushings, strut tower braces help prevent chassis and body flex in the front of your car. Strut towers themselves are exposed to plenty of force from the suspension that is mounted to them, a brace helps even the load between them, and in turn, improves handling. All you need to do is remove the 3-4 strut tower bolts, then re-install with the brace lined up over the bolt holes.
3 Pitch Stop / Engine Mounts
Your car's engine is a heavy chunk of metal with a whole lot of motion going on inside it. With so many moving parts, the engine will want to move on its own, that's where your engine mounts come into play.
One such mount (found mainly on Subarus) is the pitch stop, meant to resist forward or backward motions from Boxer engines. Upgrading the pitch stop is easy, removing just 2 bolts, and will deliver far better throttle and torque response thanks to the engine being held more securely in place. The same result can be seen by upgrading other common engine mounts as well, although some can be difficult - leave those to the professionals.
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2 Upgraded Sway Bar
Similarly to how a strut tower brace works, sway bars do the heavy lifting when it comes to negating body roll and chassis flex in normal road cars.
While your stock sway bar does its job well (unless it's worn down from age), its typically made to be economical, rather than performance-oriented. Upgrading to a performance-oriented one offers adjust-ability of stiffness, and can yield great handling results, cutting down on any unwanted body roll. All it takes to swap it out (on most cars) is removing the bushings and end links, typically a total of just 8 bolts and under an hour to remove and replace.
1 Cold Air Intake
No matter what the box says, you most likely won't see serious power gains with just an aftermarket cold air intake.
However, when combined with an ECU tune and light upgrades like spark plugs and a high-flow exhaust, noticeable power gains can be achieved. Even then, if only changing the intake, you'll gain an awesome sounding "woosh" noise on acceleration, and your engine bay will look a whole lot cooler. All it takes is removing a few bolts and couplers, a task that won't take longer than half an hour at most.