Stupid car 'modifications' you did as a teenager.

[Station]

I let my cars off very lightly, which is good considering I had two Nova's GTE/GSi's.

The chaviest looking thing I had, it was like this when I bought it:

 

 

 

 

^ That was at the Mach5 VW festival in West Midlands. We played The Street's first album very late every night and pissed everyone off.

 

 

I tidied it up:

 

[jakebullet]

1 litre cains formidable beer can made a great performance* exhaust tip on my 950 fiesta. I also impressed everyone when I fitted an onion ghia interior complete with none folding front seats.

[fred]

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

 

Old cars is serious buznis

Ok.......................................................!

[AlabamaShrimp]

I've not done much fit XR2 steering wheel and changed my first Fiesta from that horrible light blue to dark blue. Then rammed it in to the curb being a cock a few weeks later.

 

Mk3 XR3 seats and a 1600 gearbox in a 1300 Mk4 Escort that that was a twat to get away from the lights in but went that little bit quicker.

 

And that's it really. Went all strange and now don't like to change stuff

[Asimo]

Fitted seat belts (and mounts) to my Autobianchi van and then belts to Dad's Beetle

(that I had on permanent loan). I didn't want to die but was sure I was about to crash.

[stillOrange]

Currently own all of these

 

 

 

I envy every single one of your cars and your style.

[rainagain]

First car I owned was a mint one owner from new (who was actually a doctor lol) Mk1 Fiesta, I painted the mighty 1.1's rocker cover Ford signal yellow and fitted the arbitrary beer can round the HT coil. It had no radio just a blanking plate so  I fitted a radio and speakers, I cleverly used the hole for the window winder on the door card to line up the hole I had to cut for the speaker, which was great until I put the winder winder back on and discovered the window winder now fowled my lovely speakers. Had to move them and glue back in the piece of I originally cut out. I always wanted allows so got hold of some 13" BBS cross spokes from the scrappies to replace the 12" steels, however they had 175/70 tyres on them so it turned it into a mini 4x4 and killed the acceleration. Sold it when offered a rotten Nova for £100, as Nova's were 'cool', a mistake I still regret. 

 

The poor Nova suffered even more, the side rubbing strips on the doors were removed for that clean Euro look, I fitted a sub to the boot and cleverly made use of the blanked of seat heater button to turn it on and off. I tweaked the mixture on the carb as of course richer will be faster. The air filter box was cut round the bottom for that awesome 1.2 induction roar, to be fair it did sound really good! I fitted a starter button that had a previous life as the firing button on a Chieftain tank. It had various speakers/head units over the time I had it, including cutting speaker holes in the parcel shelf. At one point it had an awful body kit I bought second hand fitted to the front and rear bumpers.

 

All the cars I've owned since I mainly restricted modifications to making them go faster in sutler ways like removing the restrictors from air boxes or deleting silencers and keeping the rest of the stock exhaust. I did a lot of aero mods on my 206 following advice on http://ecomodder.com/which made quite a big difference to fuel consumption and reduced road noise.

[nebuchenezer]

redesigning a Mk1 Mex with a telegraph pole was just silly.

 

Yep, done that.

 

Most obvious early horrors that spring to mind:

 

1978 Mini 100 resprayed in Datsun Metallic Bronze with white Weller Wheels and fur interior

 

1966 Mini Cooper rebored to 1022 cc (feel the POWAH!) hand painted in Garage floor paint grey with a red rattle can roof, neg camber front arms, Cooper S discs, some sort of Lancia based interior.

 

1300GT MK1 escrot with 2 litre pinto powah, roll cage and antisocial exhaust - used to frighten the shite out of me.

 

1200 Lada riva with fully factory rally spring kit and janspeed manifold and zorst - beige in colour but great fun

 

Need to find some photos

 

 

Oh, I really miss the old scrappies these days - some of the stuff you could dig out was epic and for peanuts - complete Leda front suspension setup for a crapi/escrot for a tenner!

[beko1987]

I bought an illuminated gear knob for my 206. When they put the fire out that killed it (nothing to do with said gear knob) it was still in tact! I thought it was made out of monkey metal...

 

Did fit a banging sound system to my Puma, which was gr9 until the seat runner cut through the earth cable and made it all not work. Never re-fitted it since, sold the amp at the car boot last weekend as I was fed up of falling over it everywhere!

 

The Meriva is de-badged at the rear, mainly so I could machine polish the tailgate properly. I R doing it right!

[rainagain]

 

 

Oh, I really miss the old scrappies these days - some of the stuff you could dig out was epic and for peanuts - complete Leda front suspension setup for a crapi/escrot for a tenner!

 

It seemed to be much easier to upgrade cars, I remember getting front and rear anti roll bars for the Nova and getting an SRi four clock dash for my corsa, everything just bolted on, none of this programming nonsense. Another thing annoying about cars in the scrappies now is you can't check the mileage anymore since everything went to digital displays and there's no batteries in the cars. 

[fordperv]

I used to love scrapyard hunting for upgraded parts from higher models, now it's a bit crap as my taste in cars has stayed the same and people just don't scrap them at regular scrappys any more as they are sought after and not ten a penny £100 shitters

[brownnova]

Coz my first car was a Nova I wanted to be the anti-stereotype and keep it standard as possible, as everyone had barried Novas in 2003. So the only Mod I did was to fit a wooden Porsche gear knob, as some actual knob had tried to nick it and broken the original. It already had cool Opel alloys 😎

 

I did however use the Nova to modify a Rover 214, also modifying the front end of the Nova in the process.

 

Then allegedly i wanted scissor doors on the Nova so reversed fast and the (open somehow) door hit a tree square on and bent up like a scissor door.

 

Thankfully my dad was good at undoing my modifications, and it still got through its next MOT before it failed the next one catastrophically and i traded it in for a Polo. Which remained fairly standard too...

 

Now i have an MX5 with a noisy exhaust, silly alloys, daft fog lamps etc.

 

I'm doing it the wrong way round!! By the time I'm 50 I'll be razzing round in Fiestas with massive bodykits!!

[babydriver]

1969 Hillman Minx, Hand painted British Racing Green, Pranged, Polyfilled, Painted, Pranged, Polyfilled, painted.

Slip over head rests, Halfrauds wheel trims, fluffy seat covers, 8 foot whip Ariel, cb radio, Sharps radio cassette with Amstrad record player speakers on the back seat. Vinyl roof and gold stripes Stick on sun visor, oh and all the letters on the tyres were painted white is about adventurous I ever got at the age of 18................Sad Bastard me. Wrote off on 18th Birthday, slipped on black ice on bend in road, Driver of oncoming new Rover 3500 SD1 was not very happy. (1981)

Painted tyres on Dads car too.

 

 

 

 

 

[DVee8]

1st of August 1998 i collected a brand spanking new Nissan Primera 2.0GT 4 door in red.collected at around 9am, a spin around showing off my new wheels. Then home,side light bulbs and fog lamp bulbs changed from clear to BLUE. Yes that looks class i am bad ass.

 

Off out again around a mile from home a police panda car heading towards spins around blue lights on (the same as mine).

 

This is the new-ist car we have pulled over have a slip of paper get them changed back get that stamped,and bring it along to a police station of your choice.

[Junkman]

I was 19 when I bought my very first car, a '60 Buick Le Sabre convertible jacked up in the back with huge white letter Polyglas GTs, boom boom cherry exhaust and painted in faded gold glitter.

The first mod I did was to replace the entire exhaust system with a replica of the factory dual setup. Then I had put four new whitewalls on the original wheels and fitted the original trims,

but only after I had the car repainted in the original Lucerne Green over Arctic White. Oh, and I rearranged the individual chrome letters on the bonnet and the boot to read CUBIK, a modification, that would have been reversible within minutes. This was the only car I modified when I was a teenager.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

1977 Mini Van, @ 1985.

 

Painted the entire interior metalwork in silver Hammerite and trimmed the doors in dark brown carpet.

[Doctormop]

I found a red GT badge on my way home from school in 1986, think it was from an Austin 1300 GT no less, kept it until I got my first car in 1989 a mk4 Cortina 1600L,
stuck the GT badge to the bootlid with bostick, felt really proud of my efforts and fooled everybody into thinking that my 'tina' was suitably souped up, for 3 days at least until on slamming the boot shut the badge dropped off and landed in the gutter, I left it there for the next 14 year old to find rescue and treasure.

[New POD]

I let my cars off very lightly, which is good considering I had two Nova's GTE/GSi's.

The chaviest looking thing I had, it was like this when I bought it:

 

 

 

 

^ That was at the Mach5 VW festival in West Midlands. We played The Street's first album very late every night and pissed everyone off.

 

 

I tidied it up:

 

 

 

I "tidied" one or two up too

 

From this

 

To this

[NorfolkNWeigh]

My first car was a Mk2 Cortina 1600 deluxe.

I wanted a 1600E.

Solution;

2 rolls of wood effect Fablon sticky back plastic from Woolworths.

1 Karobes centre console with radio mounting hole.

4 Rover P6 leather seats with ET headrests.

1 Binatone cassette player.

1 Ford push button me/lw radio out of a Mk4 Cortina.

2 Binatone 10watt parcel shelf speakers.

I bolted the Rover seats straight through the floor so no adjustment,stuck Fablon on the doorstops and dash.

Placed the centre console over the gear-lever and never actually fixed it in properly, ran speaker wires along the transmission tunnel and between back seats.

The chicks loved it, Dire Straits on the cassette, leather recliners, they queued up to get taken home have a bit of a fumble then leave me so frustrated I could barely drive home!