Preparation and Planning: The 2 P's of Modifying
Originally Posted by NJHK
Preparation & Planning: The 2 P's of Modifying
First and foremost, this is written in a suggestive manner from experiences of others who have succeeded and failed when it came to the game of modifying. Take it for what it's worth.
Unlike most people think in a manner towards cars and modifying, there is much more to it than listing what part you want on a piece of paper and spending your whole check on it. There is a lot you should think about if you haven't thought about it already.
Planning:
When coming to planning to modify your vehicle, there are things that every person should look into themselves and ask themselves before even spending one penny.
1. Is my vehicle worth me investing money into?
This is a very good question to ask. Why spending hundreds or thousands of dollars into a vehicle when you aren't planning on keeping it for a long period of time, can't afford it or don't think it would reliable? Granted everyone gets excited when they get a newly purchased vehicle and know that they want to modify but the key word is want, not need. Modifying a vehicle can always wait in life, this is meant to be a hobby, not a debt.
2. How much money do I plan on investing?
It is good to know how much money you're looking to invest into your vehicle. This makes things much easier when it comes to picking out parts, going in certain directions or not going into certain directions. Yeah, everyone wants the fastest car in their town, city or state but you have to see if you can afford to reach that goal or any goal at all.
3. Can I afford down time?
A lot of people now and days use these vehicles on the street and not necessary drag or private track racing only. In these cases, it's a very good idea to understand that problems do occur and your car might be down for a day, a week or even a month. Can you afford to have your vehicle not running for this long? Do you have a second vehicle? If you do, this is something you don’t have to worry much about as long as that second vehicle is reliable as well. If you don’t have one, this is something that you need to think about a bit longer. This also might warrant how far you want to go with your vehicle.
These are just very basic, simple things that you can ask yourself before even opening up your wallet.
Another part of planning is just ideally thinking about what direction you want to go with your vehicle. Do you want to supercharge? Do you want to turbocharger? Do you want to run nitrous oxide? Do you want to stay naturally aspirated? Which ever direction you want to aim for, you need to plan on how you're going to either get to that situation or enhance your current situation.
Making a goal for your self is probably the best thing to do. What is the point of spending thousands of dollars if you don’t know where you’re going with your vehicle? Most people don’t have unlimited funds, so this is something you need to think about if you don’t feel like wasting money along the way. How do you make a goal? You could do a couple things: Come up with a HP number you want to run (I would suggest wheel horsepower) or possibly what kind of ¼ mile times you want to run. Example: You have a 130 WHP vehicle and want to run 200 WHP, how are you going to gain this 70 WHP? Or, you have a stock 15 second ¼ mile car, how are you going to reach 13s in the ¼ mile? If you have no idea how you could possibly reach the power goals or ¼ mile times in your application I would say suggesting doing the next most important thing...
Research. Researching is extremely important it can make or break your project vehicle. Like said in the previous statement, you don’t know how to reach your goal, research on owners you have done this because typically, you're not the first person who has done so and maybe use that as a "light at the end of the tunnel" to follow. There are people on online forums, professional performance companies or even shops that have experimented with vehicles that could possibly help you reach where you want to go. I would also suggest not taking what they say as 100% guarantee that you will reach this as well. Every setup is different, every engine is different and you will never 100% replicate what someone else is doing, there are just too many variables.
Researching doesn't stop when it comes to find out how you're going to reach this goal. It continues to figure out how everything works, how it affects your engine and how you're exactly making more power. You can never learn too much but you could always learn too little. Always try to expand your mind as far as different topics, even if you're not going to go in a certain direction, it can never hurt to learn. This is of course my suggestion and my state of mind.
For example sakes, let's say you have an Acura Integra GS-R. You have now figured out that you want to reach 300 Wheel Horsepower doing this on your stock motor and you want to turbo charge your engine. You have now researched enough to understand how forced induction works and how much money you're going to spend in your project and it's within your overall budget. Sounds like a good start. Now, it's time for preparation.
Preparation:
Ok, now you have your Acura Integra and you're ready to start modifying. What should you prepare for?
There is more to performance than how much power you're creating but also how you can handle the power in an overall sense.
Wheels & Suspension – Like on a lot of vehicles, wheel hop can be a big issue when it comes to big horsepower on a vehicle that wasn’t necessarily designed for it. Lowering the vehicle (properly), getting stronger mounts (engine & transmission) and other assortment of changes depending on the vehicle can help a lot with the stability of the vehicle. As well as stability, you want to have good traction as well. Face it, what's the point of having a lot of power if you can't use it? So look into upgrading your tires. There are different types of tires for different type of road environments. For this example, let's say that you’re just looking to take your Integra to the track every so often but it's your street car. I would suggest looking into a high quality and rated tire. Typically more expensive but it's worth getting.
Transmission & Drivetrain – Depending on the type of transmission you have, you might want to start looking into changing certain parts whether it's your clutch or torque converter. If you ever feel that your transmission/drivetrain parts might be inferior for what you’re aiming for, change it. As much cool as people make it seem with the idea of "ride it until it breaks", it's defeating the point of you’re project vehicle. Typically, you want the less downtime and the most reliability. Axles are another item that is known for breaking with that right amount of force. For this example, you decide you want stronger Axles & Clutch for your vehicle and you feel that everything should hold up just fine with care.
Planning and preparation basically go hand and hand overall. You now know what parts you want for your vehicle, how much money you are going to spend and just a general idea of how you’re going to reach your goal but you should also think more of how this is going to come true. The parts can't install themselves. Are you going to do all the work? Are you going to send it to a shop to do the work?
If you're going to have a professional do your work, don't do it blindly. Remember, they are people just like you and people lie and aren't always trustworthy. Make sure they are not getting into your project blindly. Sometimes you got to baby-sit a company just so your vehicle ends up with good results or you might have to find another location. Don't let them take control and use your instincts. If it smells like BS, take it elsewhere. Overall, just use common sense. If they are charging you a ridiculous amount of money for a certain installation when you know the going rate is much cheaper, take it elsewhere. On that note as well, if they are charging you much less than the going rate, I’d be wary as well. You get what you pay for.
So now you have your Integra Turbocharged and prepared to hit the streets but like most people don't get which could save you in the end from having something going wrong, it's monitoring devices. Even on a naturally aspirated vehicle, gauges are never a bad thing to have. When you're modifying, you’re re-engineering and engineers work. Basically you're changing things that weren't meant to be changed, so now you have to take your vehicle into your own hands by watching what is going on inside your car. Say something fails while you're pushing your vehicle, your gauges will be your warning sign where you could stop and get something checked. It’s more of insurance but at the same time importance.
One last suggestion, please do not modify just to modify or modify according to price. The point of modifying is to do things with quality and reliability. When you starting being cheap with the products you want and need to reach your goal, you start getting cheap results. Fact of the matter is that you have to pay to play. If you can not afford it, then don't do it at all.
This is just a basic planning & preparing guide (in a sense) for people who are new to modifying and don't want to head in the wrong direction or be in the wrong state of mind.
