Welcome to another Terrible Idea Thursday, in which we all share our own awful car ideas and encourage one another in our individual manias. Why? Because these are the reasons why we have virtual friends. I’ll start. I’m in love with my $3,000 E39 BMW, but it still needs a few things. Up first was the legal requirement to have a front license plate. I ordered the part, primed, and I need to paint it when I touch up the front paint on the car.
The obvious thing to do, of course, is to paint it so that it matches the rest of the car. I’ll have the touchup paint. This should be easy!
It’s already primed so… what if I painted it a different color? Maybe a bright blue? Seems like a terrible idea and, yet, I can’t get it out of my mind. I should stop, right? RIGHT?
Trivia Night!
Just a reminder, if you’re a Velour or RCL member: The long-promised Zoom Trivia Night is going to happen this March 24th at 8:30 PM EDT. That’s tomorrow! You’re going to have the opportunity to go multiple rounds with quizmasters David Tracy and Jason Torchinsky, with some guest appearances. RSVP to david@theautopian.com. We’ll send out the Zoom link out tomorrow afternoon.
Cheers!
Having spent most of my life with little to no disposable income, mods have been few and far between and always frustrating. Growing up with a dad who believed his cars should be bone stock, we’re talking no even a radio, and a mom whose car was always a land yacht, it was confusing, so I did the only thing that made sense to me. As soon as I had a little money, I put headers on a Monza V8. And of coure some new wide rims and low tires. The headers were virtually impossible to do right, leaked like a mother and everyone hated it but me. It scraped every bump, woke everyone up, and wasn’t really all that much faster. I’d do it again in a minute.
As an adult, the only mod I’ve done that was just stupid was to a Honda 1200 motorcycle. Nice bike but was so dang quiet I couldn’t hear it on the road. Friend told me they drilled a couple of holes in the exhaust baffles and it gave it some decent sound so I tried it. Oh lord, what a mistake. Sounded like a blender with rocks and a blade broken off. Had to get rid of it and get a Kawasaki.
I had a 95 S10 SS and did lots of questionable mods because I was young and broke:
1. Hated the factory buckets. Replaced them with plastic dragster seats with vinyl covers. was great until my first road trip in them.
2. Wanted a floor shifter instead of the column for the look. Found a Blazer console with the floor shifter and got it to work. The solution on the old column shifter? Hacksaw.
Those are probably the worst, but at least half my mods were dumb kid ideas.
An on-demand (no tank) air horn for my miata.
Someone backed into me in a parking lot, claimed they couldn’t hear my horn.
I replaced the stock horn with a self-contained air horn with an integrated pump. It didn’t look like much, but it sounded just enough like a train to make people who forgot to check their blind spot jerk back into their lane.
That story reminds me of the 60’s counterculture comic, “Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers”, the strip where Phineas is ridiculed for the weak horn in his VW Beetle and installs a freight train horn under the front hood.
Years ago I had a Honda Shadow ACE Tourer. I told the clerk that I wanted a vanity plate that said SHADOW. For some reason she said, “You can only have six figures on motorcycles plates.” My brain shut down and I requested SHDW. I’ll never forget the crushed look on my wife’s face when she realized that her husband was a complete dolt.
Most controversial? Probably keeping my wrx basically stock. I don’t want a loud exhaust on those days when I just want to smoothly and swiftly cruise the mountain roads. I have no need to attract attention, and would rather that people not know I’m coming until I’ve gone by. There have been times when I have caught an officer’s eye while being a bit aggressive and was pretty sure he would have wanted to talk to me if I’d been loud. I prefer the anonymity of a quiet, shabby little shitbox-even if it does have a wing.
It still makes me smile, and occasionally even chortle, and that’s all I need
But rally pig sticker though right?!
No stickers whatsoever currently. But I do kinda want the rally pig sticker.
Or, maybe a Bill the Cat sticker: ACK THPT is available as a tag here. That fits car appearance-and my ethos. Also in the running is HST’s double-thumb peyote fist, but no one would get it
Absolute dumbest mods? Cold air intake and exhaust on a Hyundai Elantra. The exhaust sounded horrible and rattled over every bump. It was also a cop magnet. The CAI was functional but sucked for driving in inclement weather. I also dropped that car on Eibach springs and had a lightweight flywheel and crank pulley on an otherwise stock engine. Along with lightweight wheels with proper summer tires and a beefy rear sway bar. Those were the slightly less dumb mods. The car at least handled well enough to halfway justify the noise.
Current dumbest mod was removing piping ahead of the airbox on my Cruze. It lets a little induction noise and recirculation valve noise through. It’s been like that for a long time and I have no plans on changing it.
I have done so many dumb, weird and ill-advised mods…
-Filled a tailgate and spare tire with concrete so I could get a pick-up truck to hook with no visible ballast.
-Obviously mounted a nitrous bottle with a capped line on it I would disconnect and the real bottle rolling around on the rearseat floor under a coat.
-Removed the bumpers from behind the rubber fascia on a Camaro causing the front to invert at high speed.
-Manual valve body and trans brake on a car that still had a column shifter.
-Converted an SBC in a Jeep to propane so it would run upside down.
-Put a fogger nozzle that sprayed directly into the impeller of a Paxton.
-Drilled out nitrous jets… That one was a BAD idea.
-Balanced 36″ tires with golf balls.
-Welded many, many differentials.
Golf balls. Golf balls
Fuck’s sake. Bravo, man. Bravo.
The sound when you came to a stop was AMAZING.
Wut?
Sounds like you should write & submit an article here. I’d damn sure read it
I haven’t had much time for dumb projects lately so I don’t have a lot to document anymore.
Plus most of my automotive discourse these days is explaining to people why the mods they want aren’t actually good…
Well, I once put a blown glass suicide knob on the wheel of a company Caravan. I spent a lot of time running around downtown Albany, Troy, Saratoga Springs, Schenectady and the like, parallel parking 10-15 times a day, and even in a modern FWD van with power steering, it made it a lot more comfortable to steer in and out. Was going for function, not fashion.
Glass pack on my 911. It sounded majestic but pissed off EVERYONE within a mile radius at full chat. Also shot fire on upshifts which was cool.
I can’t claim to have ever had a controversial mod to any of my vehicles, except perhaps loud exhausts I was fond of putting on my vehicles when I was younger.
With that said, I have helped others do very dumb, controversial things. Back in the late 90s, I helped a friend install an aftermarket exhaust on an Integra. The friend received comments about how it sounded bad and the tip looked like a coffee can, so naturally we removed the exhaust tip and installed an actual coffee can, Folgers label and all, in its place. People still commented about the sound and looks, but almost always while trying to catch their breath from laughing so hard.
Every modification done to my car (everything from the color of my floor mats to my choice of gasket paste) has been criticized and deemed “unnecessary” and/or “done incorrectly” by “professionals”.
Every mod I’ve ever done has been well thought out and … *dies laughing*
That would probably be the velocity stacks/trumpets/ram pipes on the Weber 48IDAs under the decklid of the Super Beetle.
No filtration, just a glorious noise under acceleration. I had standoffs on the decklid (to move the upper edge out about three inches, allowing more airflow) so I put plastic bags over the carbs (when parked) in case the forecast called for rain. Awesome.
Is anything ordered from OHOAT! actually controversial? Or is the controversy purely about how awesome it is?
Probably my Betty White window decal on my Mazda6 daily driver. But, I have a tattoo of The Golden Girls on my arm, so why *wouldn’t* I have Betty White adorning my car window?
And yes, I can see through it.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19ZM0oX7k1Yew1RURqJcsdG1bHTiHm4qJ/view?usp=drivesdk
This is awesome!
Second that
Blinkers in my BMW.
What a novel idea!
Subaru EJ motor in an air cooled beetle.
Only controversial to haters. Even when I was in the air-cooled world, an EJ in a classic VW earned my instant Hell Yeah!
22, I assume?
Yes, EJ22 is going in but the thought of me doing this has angered both my VW and Subaru purist friends.
I’ve had both, and say, screw ‘em: do what you like to your car that won’t kill someone else
I support this one and have an SOHC EJ25 in my ’72 Super.
Most controversial? Sticking with an I6 for my ’67 Mustang. Amazing how many people think they can tell me how to enjoy my car.
Other than that I’ve been fairly conservative in my vehicles. I’ll happily help a friend put a chinese eBay turbo kit on a 20+ year old Civic with 250k miles on it and help him figure out how to crank the boost up to 11, though.
In my experience, when it comes to Mustangs, the people with the strongest opinions are often those who don’t own or drive them.
I remember this one time….
In high school I didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, my buddies did though. I’d be the DD for my two best friends and I’d drive them around in the Mustang on the weekends.
As degens do, they wanted to go to the Waffle House. So we’re sitting there, they’re pounding waffles and the waitress mentions my car. “yeah, I’ve had it for about a year and a half now.” (or whatever the timeframe was)
“That long and you haven’t restored it!?! Give it to me, I’ll have it done in 3 months! You’re screwing up by not restoring it already!”
And even back then I was thinking “… WTF do you know?”
I had the 289 in my ’66 Mustang convertible, but what’s wrong with the six? It’s a perfectly fine engine and let’s be real, even the 289 in stock form was no raging stomper. The car is going to drive basically the same, regardless.
I mean, I’m being weird and hopping up the six. So that’s probably part of it.
I used to have the custom license plate “GLHF”:
https://i.imgur.com/H8Z0sfD.png
Turns out someone with that plate in another state was running through tollways without a tag so the Illinois tollway started tacking their charges onto my account. Once my car was eligible for classic plates I ditched GLHF.
Probably my wife’s license plate from yesterday’s COTD. That one is bound to strike up a debate. I’m basically the opposite of her in that regard, as I’d rather do silly stuff with my cars, like put a Subaru badge on a VW or something. I tried to ram “NLYFANS” through the DMV just for giggles.
Currently, I’m thinking about getting a plate that says “CAR” for one of the motorcycles and “MTRCYCL” for one of the cars. I’m just a serial cheapskate so I keep forgetting to do it.
Washington’s Department of Licensing doesn’t find my plate applications controversial so much as they do just plain baffling, particularly out of context. I usually have to supply an additional explanation to convince them I’m not trying to sneak through something obscurely inappropriate:
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49945378703_3648aa33a1_o.png
Ohio BMV asked me to explain a plate once because they were utterly perplexed.
Turns out the secret cheat code is “it’s a video game thing.”
A Car A Beautiful Lady Allowed a Woman- seems plausible.
The CA DMV seems pretty strict in this regard.
I once tried to get 2SLOBRO.
The DMV sent me a rejection letter saying that it was offensive, aggressive, demeaning, or something like that. I still have it somewhere because I seriously laughed out loud that they rejected something so innocuous.
Hood stripe on my 2010 Ford Focus. It’s OEM, a rare-because-nobody-wanted-it accessory you could buy at the parts counter. I found it online, gathering dust at some Ford dealership.
It fits the raised middle part, solid with lines on each side that contour to the downslope and break into F O C U S in a very ’80s-looking font. Wish I could post pics.
It fits the ridiculousness of this era Focus’ styling cues (i.e. faux aluminum center console and black on white gauge cluster) perfectly, which makes me happy. Never seen another.
My 24 Hours of Lemons car is full of controversial mods. Most of them are ridiculous and actually impede speed on track. I paid $400 for the car and $300 for the stupid plastic dome.
https://archive.nytimes.com/wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/03/homer-simpsons-perfect-car-comes-to-life-at-24-hours-of-lemons/
Now that my wife is out of town tomorrow night and I have no plans I’m regretting my
Vinyl membership, heh.
Controversial? Some people like bumper stickers whereas others do not:
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52643250146_92f0ca5448_c.jpg
Amazing!
The fake gold hood scoop, gold wing, giant orange geo logo rear windshield decal and orange racing stripe I painted onto my light blue 1989 Geo Prism LSi (hatch) probably qualifies. Though I’m not sure anything you could do to a Geo Prism would qualify as controversial.
Nevermind, that was totally rad. I’d do it again.
My trivia skills are as lousy as my wrenching skills… Is this trivia a team endeavor or individual? I may take my last place with style if it is the latter. I think my worst addition to a car was in high school- I drove a ’74 beetle, and was stuck in a weight lifting class. I found a label maker in the teacher’s desk and decided to embellish my car with press-print labels. I happened to misspell fascist, and put “die facist pig” under my driver’s side window. My parents took it in stride and gave me well-earned shit.
And back then, they weren’t the smooth modern labels where you can choose the font, they were the one-size-fits-all, impossible to get consistent type density labels that looked as cheap as they were. Just awesome.
I haven’t gotten around to it yet, but next time I take the bumper off, there’s an air horn and compressor waiting on a shelf to be installed.
Wowwww! Will this have a separate switch from the horn?
I plan on linking it to the horn, but installing a “defeat” switch. So its default state will be the air horn and factory horn blasting in harmony, but I can turn off the air horn and just use the factory horn as well.
Florida has serious Mad Max vibes, especially on the interstates, and I’m surrounded by massive trucks. https://imgur.com/gallery/0q7VOTD
Shit man, you think you’ve got it bad. I’m even smaller. Tampa is dumb for big trucks
https://i.imgur.com/A9WNvrw.png
And they’re all doing 95 on I4 using all 3 lanes
Ugh. I4.
I’m in Tampa, Mom is up in one of those little places just north of Daytona. I actively pay money to avoid as much as I4 as possible when visiting. Its so fucking horrible.
I’ve personally witnessed more car accidents in 10 years down here than I have in the entire rest of my life. 75 sucks, but at least it isn’t I4.
… so you’re saying they drive like Massholes did 25 years ago. Though arguably with smaller cars which are less unsafe.
I used to commute 93. More than a few times I had my doors blown off by rotted out Range Rovers doing at least 100MPH in the shoulder.
They all end up moving south, so they’re probably the same Massholes. Although from personal experience, NY and NJ folk are more common.
Lots of Michiganders down here as well.
Shh, we do not speak of the Direct Connection, FIAMM OE’d, factory direct replacement air horns.
Seriously. They are a 100% a thing, made for K-block cars, and 100% real double-tone air horns. (Admittedly more like Ferrari GTB horns, but deeper tone. Still fun.)
… What’s this now?
Something that doesn’t exist(TM).
You know, except it does, and I own a set. I think they probably sold a few dozen at most, honestly. I don’t know where I stashed them in the big parts box, but they’re full on air horns driven by a 12V compressor that has the correct factory connector. And a Chrysler PN on both the horn assemblies and the very clearly labeled FIAMM compressor.
They also come with a pair of brackets, so that you just unbolt the factory dual-tone horns, bolt up the air horns to one opening, and the compressor to the other. (IIRC, it’s been years.)
Yeah, the want is strong.
My stock horns were shot in my 1970 buick skylark , was planning on installing a train horn anyway, so it’s wired to the stock steering wheel. Works most excellently.
Pardon my messy test wiring in the photo.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/6GuKL2kNmz9NM6Ei7
Mine is installed in my 94 Pickup, but not the switch. It’s getting warm again, so I’ll get to it. Now that I think about it, I need to go start it to see if the battery is dead or not….