10 Sneaky Ways To Add More Performance To Your Car

One: Shorter (Or Longer) Gearing

If you don’t care all that much about top speed and you want your car to go faster in the quarter mile, installing shorter gears into your car is a cost effective way of making that happen. You can find a ring and pinion set online for around 400 dollars, depending on what kind of rear axle you have in your car. You can also install longer gears in your car if you’re more of a Bonneville speed freak which can help you go faster at the top end.

Two: Boring And Stroking Your Engine

As the old saying goes, there’s no replacement for displacement. Boring out the cylinders in your engine and increasing the crankshaft’s stroke can give you a bigger engine displacement without having to do an engine swap. If you can also upgrade the air flow in and out of the cylinders then you have can have yourself a potent powerplant.

Three: Rebuilding And Tuning

As long as you don’t clean the exterior of the engine, cleaning and repairing the inner workings of an engine is very hard to detect by just looking at with the hood open. Also, tuning using carburetor jets or tuning using the stock ECU can get you more power while not sending the signal that your car is modified.

Four: Aftermarket Pistons And Piston Rings

Piston ring technology has advanced to where you can run thinner piston rings in your engine without worrying about changes in durability. Thicker piston rings can rob horsepower near redline so using thinner and stronger ones can help you reach your power goals for your project. Aftermarket pistons can bump up your compression ratio and have indents in them to allow for higher valve lift, both things that increase your engine’s horsepower

Five: Ported Cylinder Heads And Intake Manifold

Any engine builder can slap a set of swanky cylinder heads onto an engine and drive off into the sunset but only a select few can port cylinder heads and make more power. Porting cylinder heads is one of the most cost effective ways to gain big power on a naturally aspirated engine. However, be warned; porting cylinder heads can be very time consuming and trial and error at the start.

Six: Camshaft And Valvetrain

You have to be careful with this one; if you run a camshaft in your car that’s really lopey then that can potentially ruin the sleeper vibe of your car when people hear your engine idling. It’s the lobe separation angle (LSA) of a camshaft that makes that lopey sound so as long as you stay away from camshafts with a low LSA, you should be fine. Different rocker arms and titanium valve springs can also help aid a new camshaft lift the valves effectively for more power; replacing flat tappet lifters with roller lifters in a pushrod valvetrain can also improve the performance and durability of your engine.

Seven: Weight Reduction

Weight reduction can either be subtle or not subtle at all; you can either strip out your interior which will definitely be noticed or you can use aluminum wheels on your car that look like steel ones. It’s all about how you do it so good luck out there.

Eight: Racing Brake Pads And Fluid

While it’s rather easy to see if a car has carbon ceramic brake discs at a stand still, brake pads are a more understated way to improve your car’s braking. Brake pads that are designed to work at extremely high temperatures will help you at the track; a set of performance brake pads a day keeps brake fade away.

Nine: Clutch Fan

It’s an open secret that electric radiator fans can gain you back horsepower lost by the drag of a mechanical fan. However, there is a middle ground in between the reliability of a mechanical fan and the horsepower gained by using an electric fan; that product is a clutch fan. Some clutch fans are heat triggered that lock the fan up so it can spin as fast as it needs to and others are mechanical.

Ten: Higher Compression Ratio

To my knowledge, increasing the compression ratio of your engine doesn’t make the car sound different so doing so won’t raise eyebrows about whether or not your car is a sleeper. Learn more about compression ratios and horsepower in the link below, even I’m still learning about the ins and outs of it…