- Bring 'em out! (laughs)
Bring 'em out, bring 'em out. (laughs)
Let's go ahead and throw it back a few years
to when we were 16 again,
or if you're watching this and you are 16,
just, well yeah.
There you are, looking at the red Neon SXT
that you thought was just, like, the coolest thing ever.
Thinking to yourself, man, there's a bunch of cool stuff
for these cars out there.
Why does no one do anything to these?
Why does everyone keep 'em stocked?
There's so much cool stuff.
So you hop on the internet,
punch in 2005 Neon SXT, after market, into the search bar,
and armed with the your crisp $230 paycheck
from your fast food job,
and you start just dumping parts into your shopping cart.
If I could go back and tell myself just one thing,
I would go back to that time,
tell myself, "just don't."
And watch today's episode of the Build Sheet
where we are going to be talking about performance mods
that you should probably just stay away from.
(heavy techno music with tool sounds)
I'm Gels from Fitment Industries.
Don't forget to subscribe.
Wheels, tires, and suspension.
You know, the thing that we do, we specialize in, that thing
FitmentIndustries.com.
Anyway, when we go ahead and look into the world
of performance parts, or mods, for our cars,
we're usually flooded by a list of suggestions
from companies that have names that just make you cringe.
The unfortunate truth is that there are a lot of parts
out there that just don't do a damn thing,
but they're cheap and they're marketed well,
and they'll talk you right into it.
Remember that thing, like stranger danger?
You should probably apply that same principle here as well.
If you haven't heard of it,
you probably should stay away from it.
- Look, just get in the car.
I'll go and I'll take you to your dad's shop, okay?
He's busy right now, alright?
Just, look, come on, hurry up.
Get in, I gotta get-- - No.
- Because the first thing we're probably guilty of
is picking up a short ram intake for our cars.
You know exactly which ones I'm talking about.
And those who are watching and have bought one of those
monstrosities are sitting there having flashbacks
of when you were installing yours,
and the stupid rubber hose connector piece, like,
just was like, that much smaller than the throttle body,
and you ended up using, like, a screwdriver, to like,
shoehorn the damn thing onto the throttle body
and just, like, scuffed up everything,
and it tore but you just ran with it
'cause it was, like, a $50 part
and it was like $40 for that one part that broke.
Short ram intakes are usually sold anywhere
from around, like, 50 to like, $150,
which is one of the reasons why they're so popular.
People go searching for a proper cold air intake
and they see the cost of that $300-$600
and instantly bounce back to the cheaper option.
Usually these intakes sit right off the throttle body
of your engine and have completely exposed cone filter
that sucks in all
of the heat of your engine bay from the header.
I mean usually, sometimes they'll just sit, like,
literally right next to the header.
It may look cool, it may sound cool.
You get some cool induction noises, but unfortunately,
if you're looking at it as a performance aspect to your car,
you're probably not gonna get much out of it.
The next mod you should stay away from,
or at least be a little cautious of,
would be a performance chip.
Now I know that there are legitimate, like, chips
out there for performance and are usually useful
for older cars and things like that.
But the ones that I'm talking about are like the $50
old Game Boy-looking game things
that you just slap right into the OBD-II
and promise that you get a gain of, like, 15-20 horsepower.
And guess what?
They don't really work.
Gels, yes it does.
Like, it's more responsive now.
I can totally feel it, like, the butt dyno.
It's there, it works.
It's just about as useful as putting a Dorito chip
into your OBD-II.
I guarantee if you put that car on a dyno
with that cheapo performance chip installed,
the computer that's reading the machine
is literally just going to laugh in your face.
Now don't get me wrong here,
a proper tune is totally worth it.
We've talked about it in the past.
And don't get chip confused with things such as
an access port, or another type of custom tuning platform.
What usually happens is, again,
people get a little sticker shocked
when they see that $600 price tag on a COBB Accessport.
Now if you have ever worked in a parts store before,
you're probably be pretty familiar with the next
performance mod that some people want to do to their car,
and that is spark plugs and plug wires.
I'm not exactly sure where the thought
that dropping some new zappy boys with some thicker wires
would increase horsepower came from,
but I'm pretty sure it starts with
the heat range of spark plugs.
And the conversation usually goes something like this.
Hi there, how can I help you today?
Yeah bro, I'm looking for some new spark plugs
for my Honda Accord.
I'm looking for something that's gonna make me go faster,
like those double platinum super duper iridium things.
I want nothing but the best.
I wanna get another, like, 5 horsepower out of the car.
I heard it's the best way to do it.
Oh, and I'll take some of those green spark plug wires
'cause they'll match my wheels, too.
Hell yeah.
The truth is spark plugs
can actually make a little bit of a difference,
but not necessarily in the way
that you would probably think.
Spark plugs are meant for one thing and one thing only,
and that is to provide an ignition source for your engine.
And when you get into the heat range side of things
when talking about spark plugs,
it is typically referred to as being a hotter or colder plug
and that's kind of where the confusion
technically starts to set in.
Typically naturally aspirated platforms will require
a hotter plug due to higher combustion temperatures
and more lean of a burn.
When on the other hand, with boosted platforms,
it is more typical to run a colder plug
because the more rich air and fuel mixture.
We see that a lot in the focus ST platforms,
people running colder plugs.
So in the sense of switching out old and worn plugs
to new plugs, or just adjusting the heat range
to kind of correlate with your engine platform,
you can get an increase in performance,
but usually it's not anything noticeable or braggable.
And then last, but certainly not least,
of parts just to not,
just stay away from.
I can't say I've ever actually seen one of these
out in the wild.
(video game music)
But they're out there.
And it's those electric, like,
intake turbo supercharger fan tube things
that you put in your intake.
For right around $70 you can pick up one of these
jet engine-looking (bleep) things,
and stick it right into the intake of your car.
And in theory, it would make sense.
You're pushing more air into the engine,
kind of like a turbo,
except for the fact that it doesn't compress the air at all.
The key factor in boosting an engine,
whether that be turbocharger, ProCharger, supercharger,
whatever it be,
is that they are designed to introduce more air
into your engine in the form of compression.
Similar to a jet engine,
there are compressor blades inside of a turbo.
Like, you can literally take a turbo
and turn it into a jet engine.
And I swear to God, I saw a guy do it on YouTube.
Whereas these fan things are literally just that.
You'd be better off hooking up an old box fan
that you bought in college into the front of your car
and hope for the best.
What it all comes down to is that
if something sounds too good to be true,
and it usually is.
And if that doesn't add, like, another 20 years onto my age,
I don't know what does.
But unfortunately, $50 isn't going to add
a bunch of horsepower to your car.
Car parts are pricey, and quality parts are worth it.
So if you're looking at picking up some parts for your car,
don't be afraid to wait that little bit extra,
save a little bit extra cash,
and make sure that what you're getting
is not only actually beneficial to your car,
but is actually what you're expecting.
Because even though those prices
may seem convincing at first,
after a while they add up,
and then you're stuck with a car
with a bunch of weird pieces and odds and ends,
and it kind of confuses people as it drives down the road,
and it confuses people at car meets when you pop the hood
and they see just random (bleep) poking everywhere.
And then you look kind of silly,
and we don't want you to look silly.
So go ahead and drop a comment down below
if you've made the mistake in the past
about picking up some maybe not so beneficial,
or maybe some fake performance parts.
Drop in down in the comments below,
or if there's something that we left out of this list
that you think should be in the list,
drop it down there as well.
But I'm Gels from Fitment Industries.
Don't forget to subscribe.
Wheels, tires, suspension, you know the thing.
FitmentIndustries.com.
But that's gonna wrap it up for today.
We will see you later.
Peace.