Real world budget mods and improvements

[induction]

Not having a few grand going spare to lavish on my pride and joy I have done the following unexciting things ,paint three bolt heads (rusty) repaint some letters(in red ooh)and last but not least clean the engine bay .Oh almost forgot polished the exhaust heat shield and replaced rusty bolts with new ones- had in box for 5 years or so so didnt cost much, anyone beat this for cheapness?

[Caulkhead]

Have you folded down the rear seats?

[Proxy]

On my old Mk4 Astra there was a little pipe you could remove from inside the airbox.
Made the throttle more responsive apparently

Free is even better than low cost

[Mr2Mike]

Probably the biggest increase in performance for money spent I have ever had was when I replaced the exhaust on my wife's 1.1 Mk3 Fiesta (with a cheap, standard after market part, not a performance item). The old one must have been almost totally blocked as it felt like it had double the power (up to the staggering levels of ~50bhp) and fuel economy greatly improved.

[deveng]

I removed over 100 kgs of seats, trim, spare wheel, tools, speakers, stereo etc from my first car. Cost me nothing.

[busta]

My Volvo diesel has a nice old fashioned Bosch fuel pump, so tuning it is free if you know which screws to fiddle and by how much. Add in a £15 ebay boost valve and I can tune my car to give about 30% more power for pennies

[lunchbox]

New suspension/gearbox/engine mounts or bushes. Good standard exhaust and air filter. New tires and brake discs/pads (or 2nd hand wheels/brakes off the sportier version).

Usually just refreshing the car a bit all round improves it a lot more than just getting the biggest induction kit you can.

[davepoth]

Throw away rubber floormats, and empty the glovebox. You may laugh, but this lost about 20kgs off an 800kg car for me, and power to weight is everything.

[greeneggsnsam]

davepoth said:

Throw away rubber floormats, and empty the glovebox. You may laugh, but this lost about 20kgs off an 800kg car for me, and power to weight is everything.

Must have been nice to finally find your brick collection (in the glovebox of all places!)

[davepoth]

greeneggsnsam said:

Must have been nice to finally find your brick collection (in the glovebox of all places!)

Shockingly it was the rubber mats that made up a good proportion of this - god knows why, but they were 3kgs+ each!

[Ozzie Osmond]

greeneggsnsam said:

Must have been nice to finally find your brick collection (in the glovebox of all places!)

I think you'll find it was a Liverpool Pitstop.

Wheels removed and car left standing on the pile of bricks....

[Ricky_M]

Not really a mod, but I changed the Anti-roll bar links on my Puma trying to get rid of a suspension noise.

Cost about £15 and completely transformed the handling of the car.

[g3org3y]

Get rid of that fried egg look in your indicators (orange bulbs in clear lenses) by spraying said bulbs with grey primer.

Look silver. Flash orange. Cost: Nil (assuming you have grey primer lying around!)