Stupid car 'modifications' you did as a teenager.

[Bobthebeard]

Right. Being honest here. I know some of us sneer at Retrorides etc, but are we blameless? I passed my driving test in 1979.

My confessions.

 

Bought an ex Rotherham Council Viva van (lime green) and painted the interior black, removed the bonnet and drilled holes in the exhaust.

 

Had a 1973 maroon Marina sprayed in metallic blue, fitted a massive CB aerial on the boot and destroyed the gearbox doing wheel spins in reverse gear.

 

Persuaded my mum to be guarantor on a financed Rover V8. She made me sell it after two weeks. No chance of getting insurance. I put the exhaust back box on again to sell it.

 

Customised* a Renault 4 van by painting it gold and, err, drilling holes in the exhaust to make THAT noise.

Long time ago.

Now I hate yoofs barrying cars. I sneer so hard my face hurts!

Old git.

Lol.

[tooSavvy]

My first wheels... ex builders MM1000 van'G'. grey.

 

..had some trouble with the rear wheel cylinders so blanked off the rear brake pipe. To be fair the front drums do all the work.. and the H/B was OK.

 

DangerMouse lol

 

 

TS

[Jikovron]

I'm embarrassed to a degree about mine but basically soon after passing my test I fitted my Volvo 340 with a replacement air filter box over the weber 32 which consisted of a quality street sweet tin with a the carb mounting pattern cut into the bottom and a thin household cleaning cloth stretched over and secured with an elastic band, the induction roar was epic however the performance remained staid

 

the same vehicle also received a 6foot CB Ariel to go with an old unit in the car

 it also had some 15x7 ripspeed alloy wheels which tbf looked ok and improved the road holding greatly but I soon wised up and removed all of that and fitted a mint 1.7 engine and a unicorn like almost brand new propshaft and exhaust from a no miles minter in Gossy metals

 

i also fitted a oil filter heat sink to an Estelle thinking it was great .but i didn't really consider that despite the great cooling capacity of an alloy finned cylinder it only made tiny patches of contact with the filter body....

[fordperv]

Well the thread is nothing without pictures, I give you exhibit A

 

I modified this when I was 16 back in 2001 it was my dad's car, apart from the cosmetics I i put a 2.0 pinto in it and a Peco big bore 4, put electric tricky windows and remote central locking.

 

I have done many more since, i do have a long term modified car which was under the cover in that picture. I still have it now, it nearly had a fateful end when I crashed it, i just didn't have the heart to get rid so it got stored for a few years then when I had more cash I started to rebuild it,

 

 

I have spent stupid money on this car

car, I just need to get it in for paint

 

To some extent all modifications are stupid and unnecessary

[Noel Tidybeard]

mini 1000 hs2 carb- take lid of air cleaner, put main air cleaner unit "away", place air filter directly onto carb inlet elbow replace lid voila cheapskates pancake filter :mrgreen:

 

my step brother turned his rear wheels round to get the "wide wheel look"

[mercrocker]

I spent one Saturday laboriously painting blue "Viper" stripes on the white roof of my Mk 1 Mini. They weren't called "Viper" stripes in 1977 of course - I was simply imitating North American racing practice. On a clapped out 848cc Austin Seven (yep, that's right I wasted an early one). It already had red shag fur interior, a dash that rivalled a twin engine light aircraft, Cooper wheels and Clubman hubcaps. Final mod was a Peco big bore that did nothing positive except ground out a bit earlier. Actually, that wasn't the final mod because on Sunday morning after my paint job I wrapped it round a lamp post. Literally. Bob Tullius I wasn't.....

[New POD]

Aged erm 30, I did my first modification to a car. I fitted GT wheels to an AX1.4 D.

 

My lack of research before hand did not enable me to anticipate the 5 issues with this.

 

1) I got them from a scrap yard, and two of the tyres were bald so, I found 2 perfect tyres on a metro GTA and haggled them into the deal, only when I got home I realised I had 2 off 175/60x13 and 2 off 185/55/13.  No matter I fitted the wide ones on the back.

2) Neither wide or narrow tyre would fit, the back, as the GT has a more sensible wheel arch, and the echo does not. So I jacked out the wheel arch, cracking the paint a bit at the corners. It took about 4 years before the rust was noticeable.

3) On fitting said wheels, I realised that the studs were not long enough, and hadn't factored in the need for 12 new ones for a GT.

4) Whilst at the Citroen dealer, I decided to buy the centre caps. 3 plus 4 was more than the wheels and tyres cost.

5) It being a 40 bhp diesel, massive tyres instead of the 165/65x13's (IIRC) affected the acceleration and fuel economy.

 

But hey I lived in the Yorkshire Dales and it meant I could take any bend flat out.

 

My second modification was Rally Lights, wired up using 2 relays found in a development engineering store cupboard at Lucas Car Electrical (one relay per light)

 

This meant I could take any bend flat out at night.

[Jazoli]

I've modified a lot of cars over the years but only performance wise, such as a bigger turbo, FMIC, brakes and suspension that sort of thing, I think the only questionable thing was the big Insane sticker on my 200SX, which only lasted a month as my new gf didn't like it.

[wuvvum]

I was relatively sensible when I were a lad.  My first car was a Mk3 Escort van, and mods to that were limited to fitting a cheap set of trimz, a two tone horn, and blue side and reversing light bulbs.

 

I did once "modify" a Manta GT/J by spinning it coming off a wet roundabout on the A11 and twatting the front end into the armco.

[vulgalour]

I tried to roof-chop a Sierra.  I got as far as chopping the roof off.

[Bear]

Oh, man, I wish I had pictures...

 

1: Fiat Panda 4x4 - white, twin sunroof model. I got sent some "Wicked Web" plastikote-type spray to test (they also did stuff that painted a rock-effect). All neon colours. I painted the entire Panda with it, it was loads of neon splatter shades like a Jackson Pollock painting but crap and not worth millions. The bonnet catch failed so it had rubber hooks to hold the bonnet shut, too.

 

 

 

 

2: Ford Fiesta Popular, Mk 1 - yellow. First I covered the interior silver bits with yellow electrical tape to match the outside. That's boring. When in a scrapyard, I spotted a Colt Mirage Turbo - in yellow! Swift spanner action and the hood scoop was mine, a prized item. I drilled five holes in the Feisty's bonnet, and lo, a legend was born.

 

See, one of the lads in Kelso had an 'XR3i'. It was really a 1.3 Popular. He had a full car, and my bright yellow Fiesta caught it napping with a load of other boy racers in the car. They couldn't catch it, because five in a 1.3 Escort isn't going to match 1 in a 1.1 (or was it the sub-1.0 one, I can't even remember) Fiesta with one person in. But that was the start... the hood scoop was known, and the Yellow Fiesta was rumoured to have an RS Turbo lump in it and be a stealth weapon.

 

This legend was SO strong, that when I sold it another boy racer bought it in the full knowledge it was a bone-stock wheezing pushrod.

 

3: When my VW Beetle was off the road, I got a Mk 2 Escort for £50. It was beige, and called E.T. for emergency transport. It had a glass sunroof that popped out and slid back outside the roof. It was surprisingly rust-free. Also, it was a 1.6 - and had started life as an automatic. When I got it, it was a manual. The Max Power era of Porsche Mint Green was strong, but I also liked purple. Some very minimalist, flat hubcaps were procured and painted one half purple, one half mint green. The grille was painted mint green. I put a twin-choke weber on with K&N filter and a Peco big-bore exhaust with four-branch manifold and electronic ignition. Usually Elastica or Leftfield would be on the radio.

 

Like everything I had then, it was driven enthusiastically. When I bought my first house, we loaded up the car to move. Waiting to get out of a junction, traffic was busy (for the Borders), so I floored it and dumped the clutch.

 

*BANG*.

 

I'd broken the gearbox in half. Managed to get it into second and limped it to the garage, where it was promptly stripped for parts for rally cars.

 

Then there was little modding for a while - the most exciting being a quattro-style syncro graphic in the back window of my Jetta syncro, and tinted indicators to make the bumper all black.

 

But the second CX I got changed all that. Grey F-plater TRS. First, the numberplates - black & silver. Naughty. Then, yellow headlights. Cobalt blue high beams. Yellow projector foglights installed in the blanking plates with a second hole alongside with mesh glued in to cool the lights. Purple reversing lights. Green interior lights. And on the longerons, so the bulbs weren't visible, purple neons - switched from a second interior light switch on the centre console. Plus a Blaupunkt top-end cassette/radio, CD changer in the boot with subwoofer.

 

 

 

 

The piece-of-resistance, the gilding on the lily, was, er... a failure. For maximum twat points, I wanted to start the car, switch on the lighting, fire up a smoke effect and have the car rise up, smoke billowing out everywhere. A lashed up bottle, washer pump, positioned to squirt onto the hot exhaust manifold, and the cooling fan overridden to provide an airflow.

 

The first and only experiment revealed a quirk of CX design. Their HVAC system air intake is relatively low in the bulkhead, with ducting up to that bonnet vent. Smoke built up under the bonnet, then decided to get inside the car via the ventilation. It was... unpleasant. Potentially dangerous. Mind-blowingly stupid.

 

I wish I'd been able to make it work.

 

Postscript: I spent stupid money making my white 480 more white.

 

 

PPS: Worst. Modification. EVER.

 

 

(At least it wasn't the TT280. Yes, it was a V6 XR4x4)

 

PPPS: What I wanted to make...

 

 

What I bought to try and make it possible...

 

 

Why it didn't happen (add a shit garage that left it to rot and damaged the few good panels on it).

 

 

 

[dave21478]

I was a filthy chav as a teenager - lowering kits, cut springs, hot* graphics, exhausts you could fit your head into, massive ICE installs that probably sounded terrible but could vibrate bits of the car off, flamer kits, neon ground lighting kits, cold cathode interior lighting, K&N filters, drilled airboxes....I loved it.

 

I still love it and am sorely tempted to do some of that again. I am 37 but I think I must have the mental age of a 15 year old. I already have the ICE installs in the Escort and Landrover, albeit very scaled down compared to the good ol days and sounding much better as a tradeoff for no longer being able to set off other peoples car alarms.

 

Most embarrassing - my first Mini had the standard pea-shooter exhaust and I had no pennies for an upgrade (I musta been REALLY skint because back then a Peco back box was probably about £25) so I got a bigger bit of pipe from somewhere and hacksawed the last 10 inches off the standard thing and pop-rivited the bigger pipe into place. Not satisfied with this I then bolted a second bit of pipe to the side of it to give a twin-pipe effect, never mind the second bit of pipe was just hanging in fresh air.....

Later when the exhaust was hanging to bits I went to KwikFit for a new one which cost about £40 for the whole system fitted. The technicians were pissing themselves at my efforts so I told them I had just bought the car and it had been done by the previous owner!

 

I have no photos of any of this as it was all pre digital. The only thing I can think of from the digital era was my 205....

Witness the 8 inch bit of lorry exhaust welded onto the back face of the stock rear silencer with a hole bashed through the casing to make it "straight through". It sounded biblical and would spit flames at the rev limiter.

 

 

Edit - found a better photo.

[Ghosty]

It's entirely my fault that Old Man bought the A4, and has put lowering springs on it. I've not got anything stupid planned though.

[Cavcraft]

That blue Sierra 3 door with the kit looks fantastic.

 

 

 

My first car was a truly awful Hunter estate, purchased from the absolute dodgiest of all dodgy car dealers (a hole in the wall outfit in Chester and it was shit. To make it look better*, we painted the bottom half with white emulsion, trimmed the dash with red fur, then after a nigh of lager and some smoking, we painted little red semen swimming down the side.

Next, I think, was the Morris Marina that drove me to despair: it was the one I dropped a fag down the dashboard in and got so desperate to retrieve it/mad with the car, I smashed the dashboard up with an axe a week later. I didn't even find the fucking fag either, but on the positive side it was one less Marina on the road.

[scaryoldcortina]

I took a fairly clean escort 1300S and attempted to fit a pinto to it. This was a lot harder to do than car magazines made out, first the flywheel wouldn't fit in the bellhousing so I went and got a cortina 4 speed (T9 was the stuff of dreams at the time - sierras were new!) and discovered that the bellhousing now wouldn't fit the tunnel. I started to hammer the tunnel out to make it fit, but this made the front floors and a panels fall apart in a shower of rust and isopon.

 

I gave up, bought a 2 litre capri S and called the scrapyard to come get it. Then I modified the capri with a lamp-post....

 

Then I turned 20, so I don't have to tell you the rest.

[captain_70s]

I restyled the rear wing of my Triumph utilising rear wheel drive handling characteristics, crap tyres, a wet roundabout and a steel/concrete council fence. I've also painted all the external rust in industrial grade red primer paint. The bonnet is going matte black. It has furry dice hanging from the mirror. I painted the steel wheels satin black but didn't bother with a clear coat so it all rusted off. Tempted to fit leopard print seat covers. Also want aftermarket rear fog light + front spots.

 

Wait, I'm not a teenager (couldn't afford a car when I was one)... And I'm still doing shit mods in poor taste? Fuck...

[John F]

I attached a TR7 boot spoiler to my 1.3 L Mk 2 Escort with wood screws.

[HH-R]

The limit of my modding was slinging the kerbed and scratched OEM trims from my Micra in a skip and replacing them with the cheapest ones Halfords sold.

[cort1977]

Despite dreaming a lot I have never really modded many cars.   K&N on a 1.3 Astra when I should have spent the cash on new plugs and leads was about the height of my stupidity.  

 

I would love a CX with smoke machine effects and I am 38 next month.  

[Matt]

Depends how you define stupid really and at the end of the day it's each to his own.

 

Lowered this, painted the front badge black, added spot lights and a stupidly rare Kamei spoiler that I imported from Germany for what I'm sure was a fraction of what it would sell for over here. To me the only stupid thing about all this was the cheap, non-progressive suspension as the ride was awful. I really liked how this car looked, and still do, too bad the lad that bought it sold it six months later and it was then scrapped, bet the spoiler went with it too.

 

 

At the moment I am sorely tempted to put these, painted white:

 

 

And these:

 

 

On this:

 

 

Because I saw one the same colour, lowered with similar 5-spoke wheels painted white and totally dug it plus the ride comfort is pretty shit anyway.

[dave21478]

These are the only photos I can find, brought to you courtesy of my cheapo scanner....

 

 

This was my first ever foray into "proper" modding with a DIY rattlecan respray (It was blue originally), MG Metro pepperpots painted with white Hammerite, tinted windows and the above mentioned tacky twin spout exhaust. I also fitted DIY central locking with actuators from a Metro Vandenplass, including a mechanism on the boot handle! I later fitted RS Turbo Recaro front seats and retrimmed the back seat and door cards to match. It then got black checkers on the roof and black bonnet stripes, all carefully masked and painted rather than vinyl.....oh man, I was King of the Hill with that car!

 

This Orion was positively tasteful by my standards with slight lowering, XR3i Alloys, RS boot spoiler and a big ICE install - You can just see a pair of 6x9s poking up on my custom built MDF rear parcel shelf.

 

This one got a pair of Cobra buckets, more MG Pepperpots, The entire back seat removed and rear bulkhead opened up, with a huge MDF box I made, sealing round the edges between wood and bodywork with expanding foam and then trimmed with grey office carpet from CarpetWorld,  which had two massive subwoofers in it directly behind each seat, effectively turning the whole back of the car into one big boom box. It would make your eyeballs rattle in a rather unnerving way.

It later got an MG Turbo engine too.

 

I think I was pretty privileged to live at a time when you could stroll into any scrappy and easily find stuff like RS Turbo Recaro seats and an MG Turbo engine and buy them for pretty cheap prices. I had about 6 sets of those MG Pepperpot alloys at one time - my pal Brian and I found loads of them in a scrapyard up near Huntly and we bagged them all. I would give my left nut for four of them today for my Metro.

 

This behaviour carried on well out of my teens and into late twenties. You can see my Astra Sport in the background of the Black Mini pic, which remained fairly stock apart from the inevitable ICE install and a GMax lowering kit. Oh and a fancy back box. Then it was a succession of faster cars....V6 Calibra, Astra GSi, 205 MI16, etc etc...all of which got modded to one degree or another.

[derskine]

Currently own all of these

 

 

 

[Fat_Pirate]

I tightened up the valve clearances on my Marina 1.8 coupe so much the valves barely closed, 'cos I reasoned MORE POWAH IF VALVES MORE OPEN.  While it wouldn't idle, it did go much better at high RPM.  Until several of the rocker arms snapped, about 5 miles later.

[ShiteRider]

My first car was awesome (isn't everyones) a G reg mercury grey orion 1600 ghia, rotten sills were 'mended' by fitting an rs bodykit, scorpion exhaust which seemed to twat the car at at least every six inches of it's length, koni -60 lowering kit, k&n 57i induction kit and an oil pressure gauge........rampant rot and jimmy saville levels of abuse sent it to an early grave.

 

10 years later i had this....

Originally a lovely shade of blue (same colour as my 2.3 estate), painted it santorini pearl black, poly bushed it, k&n bolt on filter, custom exhaust, mountney wheel, cossie lattices, pool ball gear knob, dropped an inch all round on rally design springs......... if i'd left it alone it would have been worth more, driven better and looked nicer.

[dollywobbler]

For some reason, I had a Max Power sticker in my first 2CV, even though the only mods I'd carried out were putting a few bullet hole stickers on it. And a Turbo sticker for some reason. I think I liked stickers. I still have that bootlid.

My first Dyane, I painted the column stalks and door handles purple and fitted metallic purple wheels. I wouldn't do anything as silly again until I was 31, when I covered a BX in stripes when I should have covered it in Waxoyl.

[Taff]

Where to start? Welding a Kawasaki Z1000 tailpipe onto my Fiat 128 was pretty stupid, on reflection. Wheel spacers on a mini, redesigning a Mk1 Mex with a telegraph pole was just silly.

I jacked up a Mk1 3 litre Capri prior to stuffing it. Roof chopped a mint marina coupe for a laugh one weekend.

 

I have an annoying habit of having tasteless & pointless gear knobs, because it annoys the purists. So I took off a genuine, original and perfectly acceptable shift knob on a 1952 Caddy and replaced it with an empty bottle of Matey bubble bath. The F currently sports a big red dice and the X is getting a Grolsch pump tap, blagged from my local.

 

I’ve rat-looked a couple of VAGs because they are easy to sell.

 

I’ve cut coil springs with a grinder and had to secure them in place with lock-wire as they are now too short to stay in their cups otherwise, and heated the rear leaf springs until they sagged, thereby lowering the rear as well. Lower than snake shit and only cost me some gas and some lock wire. Booyakasha! I’ve done that a couple of times, to cars you couldn’t easily get springs for as well. One of my PA Cresta’s was undriveable after that treatment, I ended up having to cut out the transmission tunnel and raise that up an inch. The car looked good though

 

Worst one (to my mind anyway) was Mk2 Cortina uprights onto a 105E. I ended up with heroic camber and the ability to fling it round bends but it was utterly undriveable in a straight line. Terrifying.

[Christine]

My VW T4 was passed by another T4 on the A27 one night a few months ago  . Mines a bit scruffy , but this was a pineapple surfbus T4 . All the arches were illuminated in a subtle purple glow.... I thought it looked a bit tacky ..but i want to do it to mine !!! And i'm an old giffer!

[sheffcortinacentre]

passed my test at 17 in 84 nothing past bucket seat & spots until I was 21 then built my first 3.0 Cortina (PJU894R ) mk 4 2.0 ghia,

traded this in at 23 easter 89 for a 76 350 firebired, then over the winter 89/90 built my second 3.0 Cortina (mk3 2.0 2dr GT) which I still own & is now 5.0 V8 5 speed.

[fred]

Oh Lord I was woeful - First car FE - fibreglassed  Fins to the rear ''Christine' style, and then went and put a Starsky and Hutch strip on it

Tiger print seat covers - and two box speakers from a home system wired up on the back seats - by god back then I thought it epic, looking back, what a cockwomble

[seth]

I won't contribute to this thread 'cos I've never done any stupid car modifications. 

 

Old cars is serious buznis