First Mods for your first car

This Post is following yesterdays post about “What you need, but don’t want to hear about your first car!”

As car lover’s we inherently love to mess with stuff, It comes part and passel with the petrol that flows through our veins.
We can’t help but modify our cars and we do it for so many reason’s:
Make it faster, personalize the looks, handle better, sound louder, more secure, more efficient, better braking and handling or sometimes simple things like basic functionality, installing a Bluetooth hands free system or reverse camera.

But all this aside, for a first time “Modder” where do you start?
What should you do, or shouldn’t touch, how do we learn the best way to do something?
Now most of the online car nuts will have already heard of an awesome YouTube show called Mighty Car Mods!
If you haven’t (after you finish reading this) grab yourself some pop corn, a big can of coke and strap your self in for your new addiction!

Mighty Mods is a great YouTube channel that will help you with so much stuff, it’s taught me heaps and it’s just great fun to watch, all the crazy ideas they come up with! I love it. So apologies in advanced if I quote a bit of stuff from them or paraphrase some of their concepts. It’s where I’ve learnt a lot about Modifying cars.

So lets get started shall we?
You’ve bought your mad new cheap, practical, slow yet awesome first car!
Where do we start? Bigger exhaust, coil-overs or body kit?
Nope! None of those.
There’s no point modding a car that doesn’t run, and we want to make sure everything inside your beast is Mechanically A1.
You Might say but the car looks and runs great and sales man said its in really good condition, that may be so but what I’m trying to say is, you’ve just got a car that you don’t really know what’s going on internally, It may look, sound and run fine. But we are going to start with a big ole’ service.

Mighty mods use an acronym called SWAT:

Service
Wheels and Tires
Audio and entertainment
Tint and Windows

Let explain why,
Servicing your new beast is a great way to learn your car, It’ll teach you so much about your new best friend, be thorough, take you time, do your research and buy yourself a Haynes service manual, you may find some niggling little issues that could become major problems if not resolved early on! You may find some unique quirks or common problems with your car. These are all good things! The more you learn the better and I’d rather spend a thousand dollars on keeping the car running instead of spending it on some mad modifications and end up stuck on the side of the road, with a car the looks great but doesn’t go.

Wheels and Tires

You’ll be amazed at how great your car can look with a nice set of wheels, and you’ll be even more amazed at how much they can improve your cornering.
Make sure you do your research, ensure you don’t get cheap and nasty branded wheels and make sure your increasing your grip not decreasing it!
Also shop around for second hand wheels, that’s what I did and I saved heaps of money and got the same affect!

Audio and Entertainment

If you’ve got a clapped out old cassette player with dodgy speakers It’s probably time you upgrade, Now I’m not saying you have to buy the biggest sub you can and deafen your neighborhood but your probably keen to do that anyway!

I’ve had my 2009 Subaru WRX for a couple of months now and slowly working through this process, Luckily the tint, service and Nice wheels came with the car however the sound system was an abomination. It came with a crap house cd stacker and an auxiliary input. I’ve since put in a nice Sony BT head unit with reverse camera and a Vibe flat sub for under the passenger seat, (I’ll just add my wife’s little hands make installing sound stuff into a car so much easier!)
I’ve kept the little boot space I have and I can answer calls on the road (which I do a lot of) but this makes a huge difference to the driving experience, a bigger difference then if I had an extra 25 KWs.
Again if you have to pull out door cards and solder in your new head unit gives you that intimate connection your looking for with your vehicle.

Tint and Windows

Now I’m from Australia and I don’t know if you guys from over the ocean are aware but Australia is freaking hot in summer! The sun wants to turn you and you car either into a roast potato or melt you like plastic left in the microwave!
Window tint makes a huge difference over here! It also looks mad.
Also make sure you replace any cracked and damaged glass, Its much safer, looks better and it’ll make you feel much better!

Now your probably saying Blair where are those much needed KW’s on my car I’m hunting for.
I’m going to say this if you’ve got the car we discussed in my last blog post, you’re not going to get the power your chasing (not without spending a mint!!!)
But I’ll say this, make your car look cool, Learn detailing techniques, touchup painting. Make your car sound cool with audio and an exhaust (you might gain a little more power with a decent exhaust and a tune) and make it corner better with better suspension and brakes.
We can discuss power at a later date when you’ve worn out this car and ready for your first “race car!”

You may start with this
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But its not hard to turn it into this!

Another important thing to think about is research, research is the most valuable thing you can do, research can mean the difference between making an awesome modification that’ll improve your car or stuffing up and completely ruining your vehicle!
A simple rule of thumb, If you don’t know exactly what steps to take in this process don’t start it yet, go back and research some more. If your still not confident either find someone who has done it a number of times that can guide you through it or pay a professional to do the job (especially if it effects the safety or reliability of your car)
Ask the millions of Subaru owners who have stuffed up a coolant flush! Sounds like a simple task but it’s an easy one to stuff up and if you do stuff up it can completely fry your engine!!!

Good luck modding! And if you haven’t already check out Mighty Mods on YouTube! They are awesome and they have some awesome ideas that’ll help you turn your shaggy old beast into a shinning show car!