Quote:
Originally Posted by vassba
thanks guys for all the help .. but now instead of going for a race car .. im going to make it look nice ..
im going to black out the rims and i got little sticky things that look nice .. they are "chrome" lol. i was actually thinking about getting a spoiler .. but they cost wayy too much and so do the lights i want to get. any suggestions for that? that dont cost over 100 bucks .. ? i refuse to get new rims. just so everyone knows. i have a deck and some lights on the inside.
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chrome stickers? spoiler? lights?
NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!
For starters (and this is a matter of personal opinion), I have NEVER seen a car with any of this crap on it (aftermarket) and said 'Yeah, that looks good.' It looks like crap IMO. I call 'em Pep Boys Specials' because it looks like the owner just went down the aisle of Pep Boys with a cart throwing anything in that cost less than $5. This brings us back to the dilemma of modding a car on a budget.....
Look, I get it. You want to have your car stand out and you want to play with it. We're car guys. That's what we do. But to put on all that crap is like the fat/ugly girl who decides to go emo. Yeah, it's different and now I notice you, but that's not necessarily a good thing.
That's not to say I don't like tastefully-done bodykits where maybe a nice spoiler and/or some aftermarket lights finish off the look (though let's face it, that era of car modding is pretty much on its last breath). But when you make comments like 'anything under $100', I just groan because I know this is not what you're going to get.
Again, first and foremost, I recommend you think really hard about what you want the car to do. Is it a comfortable commuter, a racer, a show car, or some combination thereof? Once you have that, start planning out what you want/need to get you there. Hit up forums dedicated to your type of vehicle (every vehicle has one at this point) and just read and learn. You'll find out what parts are good, what mods are worthwhile, and just how much the rest of the world will laugh at you if you run around with chrome stickers and cheap wings.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vassba
ok .. i just came up with an idea.. now .. i know im jumping here and there on my car .. but i just found a really huge solution to still have a cold air intake without getting the whole mod.. now . dont get me wrong .. idk if this will really work . but i have a volkswagen. and the intake tube for it is on the oposite side of the filter. could i just use that tube and connect a filter and a clamp plus a heat shield to make it run just as if i had gotten the whole kit? .. REMEMBER THIS IS JUST AN IDEA.. I HAVE NO MECHANICAL KNOWLADGE SO DONT CRITIZIZE ME ON MY OUTRAGOUS IDEAS. this is excluding gtoguy and whtboyslo b/c they have been nice to me . thanks for your imput  . |
Ah, the home-grown intake. There's nothing wrong with it if you do it right, but doing so will require you to have a bit of know-how as to what makes your car tick. I don't know a lot about VWs, but really the only thing you need to know for this to work right is how the engine meters the amount of air you're letting in. On pretty much all newer cars, there is a sensor called the Mass Air Flow sensor (MAF sensor) that meters incoming air. It's typically located somewhere between the throttle body and the filter housing. You can do pretty much anything you want upstream of this sensor and be OK. Heck, on my old Ford Focus, I removed everything upstream and just installed a cone filter like you see on all the other intakes right onto the flange on the end of the MAF sensor. It worked, though I doubt it got me any performance upgrades. Still sounded cool, though.
If your car doesn't use a MAF sensor, you need to figure out what sort of system it uses. It would probably be a speed density system, which is simpler in many ways but is a crude system in that it doesn't know when you've done things like add an intake. You can still do it, but the gains from it will be even less than if your car had a MAF sensor.
Either way, your idea about a heat shield is a good one, especially if you can make it seal against the hood when it closes so as to ensure engine heat doesn't get back to it. Take a look at most of the intake kits out there on the market to get an idea how they do it and just copy that. Also, be very aware of where you put your filter! While it does get you colder air, you don't want the filter near the bottom of the car because you run the risk of serious enginer damage should you run through a large puddle.
Overall, I hope you're getting the message that the best thing to do is to calm down and think it through. If you just start buying anything and everything you can afford for cheap, your car is just going to reflect that. Take your time, plan it out, and if you have to save up a bit to get the stuff you really want/need, do it. You'll be better off and happier with your car in the long run. Do it once, do it right. And again, there's nothing wrong with used parts so keep a lookout on forums, ebay, and craigslist. Just know what you want and search for it as opposed to just buying whatever you can afford 'because you can'.
Mike
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hmm go to a junk yard and pull the lower body kit and rims off a wrecked GTI if the let you try and get the larger 4- wheel disc brakes used on them maybe snag the larger stiffer upper and lower anti-sway bars of the GTI too.
