(intense digital music)
- I really hope "The Matrix" reboot is good.
Some part of me feels like it won't be,
but a part of me inside wishes it is,
because I used to have a poster of that movie
in my bedroom as a kid,
and I remember one of the first swear words ever spoken
was in the first "Matrix" when Switch died,
I was very sad,
I thought Switch was gonna be a main character,
turns out, he's a side character
and dies immediately.
There's a little bit of a spoiler alert there,
but just like the movie reboots,
we can hope that they'll go well,
but most typically they do not.
And most of the time they ended up failing
and we all get upset and then we go watch the originals
and we feel better about ourselves.
Some may make it through, but most don't.
Kinda like some car modifications, okay?
I'm Alex, Alex.Fi on Instagram,
and today's YouTube version,
or in our version of "YouTube Rewind",
we're taking it back to a Hot Tamale topic,
a title that gets all sorts of people
just a little bit feisty.
We're gonna be talking about the car modifications
that absolutely grenade the intentions of your car,
when you just so happen to do it wrong.
We're talking about car mods that ruined your car.
(upbeat music)
(bomb exploding)
My skin is dry, it's dry outside.
I need lotion,
I need lotion on the skin.
Oof, I can feel it.
Please subscribe so we can get
to that one million subscriber list.
That'd be super-duper sick,
and we're trying to get Dakota
to stop slapping wheels for views,
and his hands are getting bare and pink and really rough,
and we could just use all the help we could possibly get.
And if nothing else, be sure to check us out
over at fitmentindustries.com
if you're looking for aftermarket wheels, tires,
or suspension for your newly acquired car.
That goes into anything you could possibly want,
from multi-piece, to forge, to one piece stuff.
We pretty much have it all,
and we have it in stock, which is pretty neat.
All right, let's talk about some sensitive things
that you're probably going to do
or thought about doing to your car
that ultimately, maybe bunked it.
Let's get the newest mod that absolutely destroys your car.
The poorly installed underglow install thing.
Okay, listen, I love lights as much as the next guy,
and I know TikTok spiked LED strip sales
over the last two years,
across different bedrooms across the world, okay?
But just because you can put and buy a 50 foot strip
of LED lights for $12.99 on Amazon Prime,
does not mean that those should be the same lights
that you put underneath your old FRS and BRZ.
This gets even worse with the installation
when it's double-sided tape only sort of situation
that's not really measured out to look like a straight line.
Underglow installation can be super bad.
And when you do it wrong,
and then you go to turn the lights on,
and you go shoot a video, it can look even worse.
Now, underglow is sick. I love it.
I love underglow, I love lights,
I love all of it.
I've been a part of it since its initial thing
and now its rebirth thing, okay?
But, you have to do it right,
because it literally begs you to look at it.
That's the point of underglow,
is to flash at you to see that you have it.
Now, here's how to make LED underglow installs
just a little bit better.
The first thing is, is to buy an underglow LED kit
that is purposely built for vehicle application.
It'll last longer, it can take on the elements,
and typically has more LEDs per square inch
than a generic strip kit.
This is something that's particularly important
if you're jumping into the new scene,
because you're probably gonna go to AutoZone or O'Reilly's
or something like that,
and find a kit that's pretty similar
that's the same cost,
but really, it's not the quality that you want.
There's some really good stuff out there like Lowglow
that just came out,
which is an absolutely fantastic kit so far.
And that's something
that actually looks relatively pretty good.
When installing, make sure
you're keeping the strip actually straight.
This is something that's really important.
You're gonna wanna use guide marks if you need to.
There's nothing worse than seeing underglow not stay
in the same brightness from front to back,
because you chose a 3M double-side tape,
on the car while you're on the ground,
you ever do it where it's like you have your one hand
underneath the car and you're just kinda looking up
at the ceiling and you're like,
"Wow, there's a lot of spiders up there",
and you just kind of place it.
I've done it.
I did it. Don't do it.
It doesn't look good, okay?
It just doesn't.
Use guide marks, make the lines straight, helps a ton.
Another car mod that most will definitely ruin
the old resale value of the Kia Sorento,
is the, "I know a guy that can do it cheaper" mentality.
Okay, this whole mentality can sometimes ruin
everything you could possibly want to do to your car.
And you'll see this type of attitude pop up
in a variety of ways
on a variety of different car modifications.
Some of those examples might be:
wiring an audio system yourself
so you don't have to pay Best Buy 180 bucks to do it,
so you only lose 40% of the screws
and end up with a rattly the door car
that sounds like a 40 year old Honda Civic
that just happened to come together
and get piecemealed together and got in seven accidents
and still is a rebuilt title.
It's just not gonna be good, all right?
Now, you can go and do the installation yourself,
but you're gonna wanna do the installation
likely with somebody that knows what they're doing,
or with installation instructions
that you're gonna follow to a T,
which 90% of the time nobody does, all right?
The person that swears cutting springs
isn't actually that bad,
ultimately resulting in you taking a grinder to a spring,
but keeping your stock shocks
and cutting the mounting portion of the spring off,
because you want your car to be lower.
Great news is that you literally never have to worry
about any sort of mixing your coffee in the car,
'cause the moment you put those bad boys back in
and you start driving down the road,
everything's gonna be shaky as hell,
and nothing is gonna feel balanced.
Now, cutting springs is something
that I think most people know not to do,
but a lot of times they'll cut springs, keep stock shocks,
or they'll play around with their springs
and keep their stock shocks.
And unfortunately, you have to feel,
or you have to understand
that the suspension system is a whole.
When you modify one piece,
you're gonna ultimately affect the overall geometry
of the car.
You're gonna wanna be careful when you go
and just do one thing.
Which then goes even into another other side of the fence.
People that want to build a purpose-built race car,
they wanna brag that they built a purpose-built race car
and then decide to make a relatively decent car
that was okay by itself,
insanely difficult to enjoy,
because they wanna literally shave zero time
off their quarter mile or their drag time
or their track time,
because the driver mod still isn't there.
And what I mean by that,
are people who go into super insane modifications
on a daily driven car,
because they think they have to.
They're peer pressured into it.
They must do it if they wanna get any street cred
by their friends that also just got into the car scene
for the very first or second modification
that they've ever done.
Another thing is crazy, five point harnesses
that aren't bolted correctly to the roll cage
or mounting placements in the back of the car.
I think harnesses are cool,
but if you know anything about me,
I absolutely despise racing harnesses,
'cause there's such a pain in the (beep)
when you put 'em in a street car.
When you put 'em in something
that you are hardly ever gonna use an actual harness for.
If you're gonna use it to run around on the track
at a high rate of speed or doing time attack,
it makes sense.
If you're driving to college and back,
it doesn't that make sense!
(upbeat music)
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Now, you don't need a racing harness and solid motor mounts
to have a faster car.
You need good brakes and better tires, my dude.
Stick to the things that are actually gonna help you
on the high-end first.
One that's really popping back up onto the scene
is no name steering wheel quick-releases.
You're gonna wanna get one that at least has a name
and reviews on their own website.
That's what keeps your car going
in the direction you want.
If you've ever had a steering wheel pop off before,
that's super scary (beep).
And a lot of that happens
because it's not a quality quick-release,
which peels right into the non-safe steering wheels.
Now, there's some good stuff out there that's affordable,
and more brands than I can count
that stand behind their steering wheels.
I've seen a ton of brands doing crazy tests
to show that they don't bend or crack or twist or turn.
And that's really awesome,
but there are others that can get warped
by somebody with the upper body strength of me, literally.
And it's not a flex in any way, shape,
or, dude, I'm just a standardly shaped dude, okay?
That's not good.
When it comes to safety equipment,
try to stay away from the cheap stuff, okay?
You'll know it's cheap if you push down on it
and the spokes of the steering wheel bend.
It's not a good thing.
Don't bend it back and just keep on driving,
get a different steering wheel, okay?
One of the toughest things about modifying your car
is the fear that you'll do something
that's on a list like this,
or that it's a certain mod that people just don't like.
And for us, that's not the case, okay?
I, personally, just me,
nobody else, really, in this entire place,
likes harnesses, okay?
But they all do,
so you can do you, booboo, okay?
I run down to the wire everywhere I got,
so I don't just want a normal steering harness,
I want a normal seatbelt that can just clip in.
We wanna talk about what it really comes down to,
is making sure that if you go to modify your vehicle,
that you try to stay towards the things
that are still cool, fun, but safe,
and are known in the community,
that they've been tested, that they've been impact tested,
radio fatigue tested,
that the tires are actually good.
If you spend more time bragging about your wheels
and you've got $20 tires on it,
that doesn't really do a whole lot for you.
The same thing could be said for wheels and tires,
but y'all have us to talk about it just a little bit more.
If you learned anything from this,
I would say that how you install something
and where you actually get it from,
is 95% of the reasons modifications
can get a lot of flack from people.
Get enough people to use Plasti Dip the wrong way,
and people will stop using it altogether.
The same thing will apply to pretty much anything.
It'll apply to wheel lights, it'll apply to underglow,
it can apply to racing harness, or seatbelts, or chair,
or, wait, chairs?
Steering wheels, or racing harnesses, or car doors.
Why car doors? I don't know, because I'm rambling.
But the same thing applies to pretty much anything
that you want to do.
What it comes down to, do it right.
Or find a friend that has done it before
and is willing to teach you patiently
how to do it the right way.
Or hack it all together.
I mean, it's up to you at this point.
But hey, let us know what you think below.
And of course, if you're looking for aftermarket wheels,
tires, or suspension,
be sure to hit us up
over at fitmentindustries.com.
I'm Alex from Fitment Industries,
and we will see you later, peace.