Cheap and Cheerful Mods

Prince

Prince

Torque King
Points
242
Location
Northampton, England
Car
BMW E36 318is Coupe
All of us have probably looked on Ebay at some point looking for a bargain. But most of these bargain bucket mods look a bit tacky and/or cheap. My question is, are there any mods you can obtain cheaply that look quite good. I will leave it up to you to determine how cheap is cheap...but what ideas do you have?
 
Max power air intake - £9.99 or sumthin
Windscreen wiper spoilers - £2.99
Go faster stripes - £4.99
Bullet dustcaps - £1.99
Max power seat covers - £39.99
Chrome big bore bolt on - £2.99
Body decals - Free with Max Power

^ OK they dont look good, there cheap tho
 
Simple things like changing the side repeaters looks good. All for about £15! Sponsor stickers also improve the look...providing the parts from those companies have been used. I don't wanna see 'HKS' on the side of a vehicle that has no HKS parts!
 
engine dress up parts are not that expensive....

debadging your can is a cheap way to improve the exterior look of your car


for the interior i think having a decent headunit can lift the look of your centre consol.... you can pick up mats, belt pads , neons cheap as chips on the internet.... but the best thing u can do is put fluffy dice in the centre mirror only 3.99 form halfords! lol

as for performance parts i would not go for cheap parts, i think it is worth spending the money and getting quailty parts!
 
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for me it all goes on what car you have
for mine havd done the black grill and that it wont have any more mods on the out side
unless i get some money as i like a set of headlights for it but they are 190 quid

and the trans am nothing cheap on that
 
Prince said:
Sponsor stickers also improve the look...providing the parts from those companies have been used. I don't wanna see 'HKS' on the side of a vehicle that has no HKS parts!
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Sponsor stickers improve the look, are you serious? Only, perhaps, if they are covering rusty areas. :)

If they are financial sponsors, then OK, but I have never seen the point in ruining a perfectly good paint job with free advertising. But then, I am very old school and much prefer subtle and classy modifications - stickers fail on both counts.
 
waynne said:
Porting is fairly easy to do and free if you have the drill/stones.
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Fairly easy to do and even easier to f*** your head up, unless you know what you are doing. At the risk of being banned from this forum, I disagree with Waynne on this one :) Don't even attempt it unless you are prepared to be disappointed with the results. Porting is part science, part art and a lot of experience and expertise. Stay with the stickers :)
 
old-git said:
Sponsor stickers improve the look, are you serious? Only, perhaps, if they are covering rusty areas. :)

If they are financial sponsors, then OK, but I have never seen the point in ruining a perfectly good paint job with free advertising. But then, I am very old school and much prefer subtle and classy modifications - stickers fail on both counts.
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By sponsor stickers I did mean being sponsored, or at least stickers that match the parts used. If Veilslide have tuned your car for you then a free vinyl may well look good! Maybe I should have used the word vinyl instead of sticker!!
 
old-git said:
Fairly easy to do and even easier to f*** your head up, unless you know what you are doing. At the risk of being banned from this forum, I disagree with Waynne on this one :) Don't even attempt it unless you are prepared to be disappointed with the results. Porting is part science, part art and a lot of experience and expertise. Stay with the stickers :)
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Yup - instant life ban for disagreeing with me! :confused: Not really - Forums are collaberations and we all arrive at a good consensus by disagreeing and refinining what has been said before. So I take your point but ....

I actually had in mind 2 things
1) Port matching rather than and major internal reshaping
2) A non performance engine

(Neither of which I bothered to introduce to my post!)

In most of the basic engines I have seen there is a massive difference in the port sizes to exhaust/intake sizes. By smoothing out the step most owners will see an improvement.

I take your point though that in a performance engine IE a sport or Type R version you will end up mucking things up.
 
waynne said:
Yup - instant life ban for disagreeing with me! :confused: Not really - Forums are collaberations and we all arrive at a good consensus by disagreeing and refinining what has been said before. So I take your point but ....

I actually had in mind 2 things
1) Port matching rather than and major internal reshaping
2) A non performance engine
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1) Agree, as long as you only go into the port no further than 10-15mm. Any more and you will risk altering the flow caracteristics unevenly.
2) Agree.

Can I come back now, please? :)
 
Ebays good for little things, I got some smoked side repeaters of there and some chrome dial rings and angel eyes at a fraction of the price in the shop.
 
Yes OG you can come back now!

Hayley - I often forget ebay. There are some great bargains to be had. Especially when someone has bought the wrong item for their car and need to sell it on quickly.
 
just bought (from ebay) a sparco gearknob £20 and a momo gaiter £10 for it and fitted it earlier and just makes the bland interior of the civic look nicer, also ordered some chrome led washer jets that should come monday but am going to probably spray them black as i hate chrome
 
blacklineninja said:
Go Faster Stripes and Fido Dido stickers!!! Proper rocking 90's stuff!!!
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Only the black and white stripes provide any sort of performance gain and they must be shiny in order to avoid excessive drag. If positioned properly, a 50mm wide Halfords black and white stripe can add 5mph to your top speed and knock up to half a second from your 0-60 time.

Fido stickers should only be used by the experienced sticker tuner. In the hands of an expert, they have been known to increase torsional stiffness by 5%. However, if used incorectly they can give you warts.
 
Interestingly, blue LED sidelights can also reduce frontal drag by a small degree.

This is due to the non-linear spectrum of the light they emit. The line spectra can excite electrons in the O2 atoms that make up water vapour molecules in the air. The electrons move to a higher enegry level, or shell, thereby slightly increasing their temeprature. This slight increase in temperature renders the air [very] slightly less viscous. Therefore the frontal drag presented to your car is slightly lower. Which, in turn means that have a net reduction in air resistance. Clearly, the benefits are more clearly observed at higher speeds.

Further, as the electrons fall back to their lower energy levels whilst passing over the car, their increased density creates a small degree of downforce.

SO there, you go. I don't have blue LED sidelights, but maybe there is some rationale for fitting them after all.
 
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