Essential Upgrades That Make Any Project Car Faster
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Automotives Blog
All the project cars share the typical teenage angst of adolescence. You’ve actually shelled out money, it is really in the driveway, and it still hasn’t worked out as quickly as the spreadsheet numbers predicted. That’s almost always true, no matter how many HP you have. It’s a distribution issue.
Most project cars continue running factory hardware somewhere in the power rail from the power source to becoming motion, while power has to pass through a long series of parts to reach that point. When the engine tries to do its job, but a soft bushing or a heavy rim or tire so indifferent to playing ball throws it out of the game, it is a waste. No parts break, as is always the case. No matter how cute and comely that car gets, it just doesn’t feel like what it should be.
Dating, much like any other area of life, is centered much more on the fact that you’re having a successful connection rather than doing more. No two people want the same, but there are ways to make those ideal changes in a small, practical way, some of which can be accomplished over just one weekend. Below are areas that you should tackle first.
Start With Rotating and Unsprung Mass
Weight slows a car down, and not all weight is equal. The Department of Energy puts the general case plainly: The penalty on fuel economy for an additional hundred pounds added to a car costs around one percent and will be the most severe for smaller cars. The concept of acceleration is similar, although stiffer, as it is the weight at the wheel that has to be accelerated not only forward, but forwards and upwards.
By pound, that’s the most costly part of the car, so you can see a heavy cast rim is the most expensive part. Remove ½ of the engine’s mass, per corner, and you’ve eliminated mass twice: in both translation and rotation. More to control means that brakes get a shorter job, the suspension gets harder to control, and throttle response is tightened up ahead of any timeslip you’ve ever experienced.
Purpose-built drag wheels take that idea further than any street wheel bothers to. They are engineered around launch loads and bead retention rather than curb appeal, so the weight comes out of the places where it costs the most. That is a different design brief, and it produces a different part.
Fix the Contact Patch Before Anything Else
There’s only one thing that translates torque into forward motion, and that’s grip, and that’s the most often overlooked upgrade on a budget, built bike. Two thousand dollars will be a cost to be paid for intake and exhaust, plus using tires as old as the time the car was manufactured.
Everything else except the tires is dependent on which tires you are using. At the proper pressure, it’ll pump another 30 hp and in virtually any circumstance for a mere fraction of the price. Low pressure adds headway, but brings the tire closer to the rim, which is what retention hardware is used for; otherwise, it’s just a racing piece of tack.
Make the Chassis Hold Its Geometry
A stock suspension is designed to be comfortable; however, for a load no one on a drag strip or an autocross course will ever duplicate. Soft bushings provide tolerance to the position; as soon as geometry begins to wander, tires will be at the wrong angle.
Most of that is addressed with polyurethane or spherical bushings, a stiffer rear anti-roll bar, and real dampers, not rebuilt originals, for a few hundred dollars. The gain isn’t head-spinning, as recorded on paper. It’s THAT big in the back seat; the car finally does the same thing twice in a row, and regularity is what gains you the ability to drive closer to the limit! Before you purchase, read the rules if you intend to work to compete! The SCCA publishes its General Competition Rules with monthly updates and full technical regulations by class, and a surprising number of popular modifications will move your car out of the class you wanted to run.
Then Go Looking for Power
Once the car puts down what it has, power adders start making sense. A tune, better breathing, and a converter or clutch matched to the new torque curve will all show up at the track instead of disappearing into wheelspin. Do it in the other order, and you are just buying a louder way to lose traction.
Factory engineers work the same sequence, which is why limited-run performance models get suspension hardware and wheel changes rather than more boost. Subaru’s Series. Yellow WRX and BRZ arrived with STI-tuned dampers. That’s what’s left of the laps were spent on, so Brembo brake changes and sharper wheel and tyre packages, unchanged engines.
There is no prettiness to it in any way. No one ever sells a bushing kit. But the car that really feels quick is the car in which nothing in the chain of events is stealing away the engine’s power, and that is accomplished by a series of mundane decisions and actions taken in a proper sequence.
Opt for a step, by, step approach. The first step to doing that is sorting the contact patch, removing the weight from corners that count, or, put another way, making the chassis not want to move around, and then start putting things on top of the engine. In this case, each action is worth more than the previous, and it is the exact opposite way that most builds are funded.
This uniformity holds when carrying out dating, too; a certainly promising match must establish a more in-depth relationship beyond an initial impression. Even the thrill of a race car cannot replace the patience and commitment required to build a meaningful relationship. Honest communication, steady effort, and small acts of consideration help build trust over time, turning an initial spark into a relationship that continues to grow.
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