In reply to Flynlow (FS) :
Man, that seat is gorgeous!
In reply to Flynlow (FS) :
Man, that seat is gorgeous!
In reply to Indy "Nub" Guy :
Question I've had in mind for a future project...
Do you have the car (and what car, btw?) tuned for the restrictive exhaust, or the open? Or is there little enough difference in the well tuned exhaust of today? Do you happen to have a separate tune for each?
Thanks.
There's a reason momo wheels and knobs are a thing. I too am big on what you touch. I'm going to spend a lot of time getting the accelerator pedal right on my 62 midget mzr project. Ball bearings and smoothness. I want this thing long travel and smoooooth.
Also, I don't know if I would consider this a "modification" but polishing the glass on anything more than 20 years old using a mixture of bon ami, a small amount of warm water (just enough to make a paste) using 0000 steel wheel is a game changer with regards to clarity and removing any stubborn residue or scratches.
Solid rubber front control arm suspension bushings from an Audi TT. For $30 and a few hours to install every aspect of how the car performs is improved in a very noticeable way.
Replacing the interior door handles with pulls on my NA miatas. That little extra room on the left made a huge difference for comfort.
Couple of mods, one was $150-ish one was $1.50-ish, both were worth every penny.
The first was my electric fan. I replaced the worn out 40 year old electric with a modern SPAL unit. Changed the way I drove the car. I didn't worry about traffic anymore.
The second mod was a couple of zip ties, vacuum caps, a t junction and a foot of vacuum line. The vacuum port on my carb is a real pita to get to. This makes tuning a chore, so I installed a remote vacuum port where it was easy to get to.
Camber bolts in the front struts of my old Eagle Talon. Handling transformed for $20 and a few minutes of work.
$10 home made boost controller and a used junkyard boost gauge for the same car. 15 psi is a lot different from the stock 10. 20 is a lot different than 15.
Not simple, but a good "while you are in there" mod. Lightweight flywheel on my Legacy GT. I bought the car new, installed the flywheel with a new clutch at just over 100k mi. It transformed the car, no more laggy throttle. Would have been worth the effort when the car was new.
Polished headlights and new bulbs.
Flyin Miata door bushings in my MSM. They were on sale not too long ago, so I figured why not. I wasn't expecting much but they did go a long way to reducing rattles and creaks. Now most of creaks and rattles comes from the top's frame.
When I had the Crappy Miata I pulled the seat foam to figure out how I wanted to reshape it. Ended up driving it around for the rest of the time with a folded towel on the bare seat pan. The difference in driving position was the difference between a car that was ok, and one of the most enjoyable cars I've ever owned. $0.00
In the Traccord I have a second hand K-tuned aluminum shift tower/knob. That single mod turned the car into the best cable shifted car I've ever driven. I attribute it to my staying in love with the car for several more years than I would have thought possible. $200
ShawnG said:Odyssey battery.
The one in my Moto Guzzi LeMans just failed after 15 years of use.
A good upgrade and would do again.
Crappy motorcycle batteries. The one in my Yamaha FZ1 only survived 14 years. Why are they so cheaply made these days? /s
For $4.50, this has been a rewarding cheap mod on every car I have owned with stem-mounted shocks. It's especially effective on cars with limited travel and/or stiff shocks as the shocks respond right away instead of doing very little for~3/4 inch of wheel travel (in the case of my Caprice and Tahoe). Got rid of the floaty boat ride at the front end.
https://www.energysuspensionparts.com/9.8126
The second one that comes to mind was running a strip of felt tape around the door frames where the plastic door cards contacted. It is amazing how much nicer a car feels when it doesn't creak and rattle constantly.
Two things come to mind real quick.
Both done in '81 - The J.C. Whitney rear sway bar - that came in an ADDCO box with ADDCO instructions- on my 250 was a night and day change. The Cibie H4 headlights that were advertised at the time as legal for motorcycles only were really night and day!
Both mods are still on the car and working great.
I have to say swapping the driver seat in the intrepid made huge change in how the car felt. To be fair, the OEM seats never were designed with anything aside from comfort in mind, so swapping in a used SR2 model Recaro was night and day, it drastically increased driver confidence and greatly improved the cars capability (6 seconds reduction in lap time around the same small track). It's among the highest on my list of 'mods' to make a car my own, greatly increases connection to the car overall.
Cleaning.
I had an '81 Rabbit I bought "totaled". Girl who owned it had spun it into a median and bent the axle. JY axle and back on the road. I needed DD, so vacuumed it out and went with it.
I had a break from work/school and decided to actually clean it. Seats came out and were steam cleaned. Pulled the carpet and pressure washed. Cleaned all the vinyl, glass, and dash.
It was like driving a new car.
I forgot my '71 510 2-door. Bought it with an automatic and drove it a couple of years and came across a 5-speed that more or less bolted in (literally - think I had to manufacture a rear trans mount. The automatic driveline even worked).
Completely changed the character of the car.
Adding a third circuit that only operates when the engine is running. I never knew this was missing from my life until I did it in a 73 Impala wagon that I used for camping. The possibilities are endless, but not overly useful in motorsport.
You wire up a relay that grounds through the oil pressure sensor. I put the signal wire for my sub amp on that so I could still listen to the radio when the engine was off and not kill the battery. I hooked up a 100A solenoid between the front battery and one in the back so I could camp and drain the back battery but still start the car... and it would start charging the rear battery once the engine was running. Angel eyes or DRLs. I knew one guy who used it as a starting aid. He had a 12.5:1 ethanol 502 that kept killing starters. He hooked up the ignition lead to that. Spun the starter until it made a little oil pressure and then it kicked on the spark, then rigged a kill switch after the relay to shut it off.
Aside from that... better seats, better stereo, and a GRM Dork bumper sticker.
When I bought my '15 Ram 1500, it came with the base radio and no steering wheel controls. The base radio did not even have bluetooth or sat radio. The wheel mounted radio controls don't sound like a big deal until you realize the radio is like 3 feet away from the steering wheel.
I added a used OEM radio from a higher trim level, an OEM steering wheel radio button kit and a used OEM steering wheel from a higher trim level (silver bezel!). Now I can use the hands free phone functions and stream music.
It made a huge difference in comfort on my 55 mile daily commute.
Also, adding a muffler delete kit for wonderful V8 noises upped the fun quotient by a factor of 10.
Not performance-related, but I recently had to add an infant seat in my car and my wife's car. The biggest change is that now there is this really cute little girl in the back seat that looks just like me. 
I have a 97 Mustang that I was autocrossing in ESP. It had rear axle hop exiting corners. My car did not have the quad shocks so I designed some brackets and had a friend who owns a machine shop fab them for me at a great price, free. Bought a pair of Monroe shocks for about $15 a piece, installed them and no more axle hop.
Colin Wood said:Not performance-related, but I recently had to add an infant seat in my car and my wife's car. The biggest change is that now there is this really cute little girl in the back seat that looks just like me.
You must be adorable.
Huh. Some of you people have a funny definition associated with "modding." A shift knob is not a "mod." Sorry. 
When I first got the RX-7, my wife and I were good friends (still are, in fact) with a couple that was into small-block Chevy's and drag racing. I figured a turbo rotary might be able to give them a little friendly competition. So, since the key to more power was less muffler, off it came. At one point, I was running just the downpipe and a 45-degree turn down. Yes, the car was faster, but not as much as I'd hoped, even with a K&N filter in the stock airbox.
It wasn't until after I removed the stock air flow meter and the airbox and replaced the ECU with a Haltech and MAP sensor, that the car really woke up, even running a makeshift fuel map that was cautiously pig-rich at full load.
So it was an effective way to illustrate the "engine as air pump" principle, and removing restriction on the exhaust side won't do much without removing restriction on the intake side.
Now that I have a van, I'll be looking for proper captain's chairs for it. Nothing wrong with the stock seats, but not what I'd call luxurious. I think I'll skip the Sparcos because, well... it's a van. I don't need to be kept planted in my seat when I can only pull about 0.2g in a corner.
On race cars (and presumably also street cars) one small mod I have done on more than one car is to alter the pedals so that they have enough room for your feet, as well as sometimes installing a floor mounted stop for the clutch pedal - no point losing time going to the floor , just find the friction point and adjust the stop to just past that.
Sometimes bending a shift lever for better positioning or adding rake or more fore/aft adjustment to a seat can affect ergonomics significantly and make a car easier and less fatiguing to drive long distances.
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