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Top Ten Easy Performance Projects

Cool car stuff without getting too dirty

You want to modify your ride. There are tons of easy performance enhancements you can make that will take up just a small part of your time. Think about it-only two or three hours after work or a over a lazy Saturday. Installing creativity-impaired bolt-on performance is like falling out of a tree: anyone can do it and you always know where you'll wind up.

Here's the big question: is the hardest part of your wrenching project getting started? How often have you planned to spend the evening bolting on a new carbon-trispiffonate gear modulator only to find yourself still on the couch three hours later? Get focused. You won't be bogged down in details if there's only a few of 'em. Choose a simple project from this list and hop to it.

Free-Flow Exhaust

Still the best performance upgrade ever, the age-old act of replacing stock exhaust and mufflers with bigger and better-flowing hardware has never been eclipsed for effectiveness. In case of late-model emissions voodoo, better exhaust has evolved into the prepackaged cat-back exhaust system. If your rig is pre-voodoo, you have no excuse but to swap tubing up to the heads, but catalytic converters are omnipresent on late-model rides. An improved exhaust system for emissions-controlled cars usually means installing things downstream from the cats. Lots of companies manufacture pre-bent exhaust systems for a myriad of cars and trucks.

Pads and Rotors

As luck would have it, brakes are an easy thing to improve. That's lucky, you see, because your brakes are very important to stopping your car. The factory brakes are usually sufficient to slow and stop your car faster than, say, the Ice Age, but in situations beyond factory levels you'll probably need more braking power.

Electric Fan

If you stick your hand out the car window while going 45 mph, you'll feel the wind push it back. Speed up to 75 mph and the push is much greater. What do you think your engine fan does as you rev your engine? RPMs climb, resistance grows and your engine must work harder. Sure, the fan clutch is supposed to alleviate all this, but it can't. That resistance and subsequent drag on the engine will still be there, robbing horsies you would rather use yourself. What if you could run a fan off the electrical circuit, which is always charging and only draws one or two horsepower, and remove the mechanical fan altogether?

Fluid Cooler

Oil and transmission coolers are an upgrade that could be classified as true bolt-on. The factory often installs them on the assembly line, and adding an upgraded unit could be as easy as replacing the factory unit, bolt-for-bolt. Oil and transmission coolers make short work of high trans or engine oil temperatures and lengthen the lifespan of the device and fluid they cool. By routing the hot fluid to an area of the car that sees lots of airflow, frequently just in front of the radiator, auxiliary cooling units help keep the whole package from heating up past operating temperature. The cooling units for oil and trans fluid even look like miniature radiators (because that's just what they are). Other automotive fluids that can be given to auxiliary cooling units include manual transmission, differential, shock-absorber, power steering and brake fluids and of course, engine coolant.

Fuel Pump/Filter

One of those maintenance chores that can fall into the upgrade department is the fuel pump and filter. Consider that things wear out-blower motors, wiper motors, window motors, starter motors; why shouldn't the fuel pump, another electric device, wear out too? It does. Have you ever thought that yours needs replacement? It might. Experts say that after five years most pumps have slid from ideal volumetric efficiency to tragic inadequacy, and the filter's dirty. This may mean you, too, are short on fuel.