Car Mods and Upgrades Explained by Mechanics

Modding or upgrading a car is not that easy. You will need to have a decent amount of money and will obviously need some knowledge about what you are doing. Making upgrades to your vehicle has to be legal and safe, otherwise, the car won't be driven on roads and you will just waste your money and time.

In this article, I will recap everything my team and I have written about mods and upgrades of various vehicles. I will tell you about the most commonly upgraded cars, engine upgrades, interior and exterior mods, painting, etc. Also, I will give you links to full articles for further inspection.

General upgrades and mods

One of the popular types of articles in our blog is the article about a certain car model and its upgrades. We've written a ton of them and I want to share the most popular ones with you.

So, among Japanese vehicles, we've reviewed upgrades for the 2nd-gen Toyota Tundra, the 7th-gen Honda Accord, the magnificent ATV Honda Talon, the first-generation Toyota Tacoma, the beautiful and powerful Lexus LS400, the wonderful Honda Element, and of course Toyota Camry.

Those are my favorite articles with a piece of my soul in each of them. But that's not all. We also have written about the Toyota 4Runner and Subaru Outback. We paid certain attention to one of the most modded cars - the Nissan Frontier. We reviewed two Mazda vehicles' mods - the Mazdaspeed 3 and also the legendary Mazda 6.

Also, I'm very passionate about reviewing mods and upgrades for domestic US vehicles. One of my favorite ones is the Ram 1500 5th generation. Recently, we've written about the Bronco Sports but it's not that common to upgrade that car yet.

Finally, there is an article about the Dodge Dakota and the best upgrades for it.

Car mods and upgrades highlights:

• Commonsystems:engines, interior, exterior, suspension
• Average prices:$1,500 - $7,000
• Average waiting time:7 - 21 days
• Commonreasons:higher speed, power, and visual improvements
• DIY mods:just minor visual changes
• Level of satisfaction:high

Engine upgrades

If you want a non-visual mod, you will most likely start with the engine. In older engines, it was enough to install a more efficient carb like Edelbrock and set it properly to get some gains. Also, a lot of owners used additional EFI systems to upgrade such engines. Today, those upgrades are just a memory as well as the additional fuel pressure regulator or something like that.

In modern engines, upgrades often touch the turbocharger or supercharger. This allows getting a significant power boost without investing thousands of dollars. Also, such upgrades will most likely affect your engine longevity just in a minor way. While the traditional ways to make a modern engine faster are way more impactful.

Among serious changes, I can remember the cylinder head porting. Also, we've written about a total engine rebuild with upgrades to its systems.

Also, people very often use cheaper upgrades like installing an aftermarket camshaft or using spacers for the throttle body. But those ones are very specific and rarely lead to good results.

Engine upgrade highlights:

• Commonsystems:fuel supply, air supply, exhaust, software
• Average prices:$500 - $6,500
• Average waiting time:1 - 21 days
• Commonreasons:higher power and torque
• DIY mods:just minor things, usually plug & play
• Level of satisfaction:medium

Engine swapping

When you don't want to pay for upgrades and wait for several weeks, there is another option to make your vehicle more powerful or at least solve the engine problems. This is swapping the engine.

Please bear in mind that not all kinds of swaps are legal and also selling the car with the swapped engine is not a simple task.

Anyway, this is a very common thing American car owners choose. There are even engine companies that make aftermarket engines like Blueprint, Powertrain, or Jasper. Also, a lot of car owners use legendary engines that have proved they are superior. Like the Hellcat engine, for example.

In Ford vehicles, a lot of owners will use Cummins engines for swapping if those engines were installed in other modifications of their trucks. Those diesel monsters are workhorses and they can live almost forever.

Things are tougher in Chevy trucks that have a more limited choice of really legendary powerplants to choose from.

Engine swap highlights:

• Commonreasons:more power, death of the original engine
• Average prices:$1,500 - $7,500
• Average waiting time:10 - 18 days
• Common problems:additional upgrades, higher costs, finding proper engine
• DIY mods:impossible, in this case
• Level of satisfaction:medium

Exhaust mods and upgrades

If you decide to upgrade your engine, there is another step to make it work better. And this is upgrading the exhaust system. But, in this blog, I usually focused on upgrading the exhaust system due to emission equipment problems.

There are a lot of talks on forums about the possibility of DEF system delete. Also, the fight with a failing catalytic converter or O2 sensor often ends with deleting this faulty thing. But will you pass the smog test? Of course, no, there are some things you will need to do before this.

Another focus on exhaust-related articles is the modification to prevent catalytic converter theft. We've come up with the idea that the catstrap or catclamp are the two most efficient ways to keep the original catalytic converter untouched in your vehicle.

Exhaust upgrades highlights:

• Commonreasons:technical issues, power boost, delete
• Average prices:$300 - $3,000
• Average waiting time:1 - 9 days
• Common problems:emission test
• DIY mods:possible but quite complicated
• Level of satisfaction:low

Engine sound mods

One of the common reasons people upgrade their engines is to get a deeper and louder sound. While some opt for total upgrades with power boost and exhaust replacement, some find other cheaper solutions.

We've investigated how this will work in diesel engines and described several possible ways to modify their sound.

One of the most common things people tell their mechanics - they want the V6 engine to sound like a V8, so the sound should be deeper. Sometimes, this is possible to achieve by just minor exhaust modification without any major changes.

Also, modern small 4-cylinder engines can be made sound much deeper with the help of simple and pretty cheap techniques.

Engine sound upgrade highlights:

• Commonreasons:pleasure, wish to feel the vibration when driving
• Average prices:$350 - $1,500
• Average waiting time:1 - 3 days
• Common problems:too loud sound, vibrations, no actual gains
• DIY mods:possible
• Level of satisfaction:low

Installing additional equipment

One of the easiest ways to upgrade your vehicle is to install some additional plug-and-play equipment that is ready to use once installed. Like the remote start systems for cars that aren't initially equipped with this feature. Or some anti-theft equipment that is extremely popular in some states now.

But, in most cases, it's all about modifying something in your engine. For example, installing special equipment that modifies the way your ECU works (like the Pulsar or maybe JB4 equipment). These units allow you to quickly change mapping and achieve more power and torque without changing anything else.

Also, in older cars, you may opt for special EFI units that will seriously improve the work of fuel supply systems. Unfortunately, all these plug-and-play modules aren't that efficient and have a lot of negative reviews by car owners.

Addons in your car highlights:

• Commonreasons:more power, cheap upgrades
• Average prices:$150 - $800
• Average waiting time:1 day
• Common problems:no efficiency, dangerous installation
• DIY mods:possible
• Level of satisfaction:low

Car body upgrades

As you may know, Cararac.com is not about body repair or painting. We don't usually write a lot of materials on those topics.

But we still wrote an article about Chevy Square Body Truck and its painting patterns.

Usually, when it comes to body upgrades, you will need a professional who will make the project for you and show you the results before actually taking your money. Otherwise, all upgrades and mods may be beautiful only in words but ugly when they are finished.

Also, repainting vehicles or adding some tuning body parts is not always the best idea, so you will need to consider all the possible consequences.

Car body upgrade highlights:

• Commonreasons:pursuit of better design
• Average prices:$500 - $3,000
• Average waiting time:3 - 14 days
• Common problems:no improvements, bad quality bodywork, depressing results
• DIY mods:possible but extremely complicated
• Level of satisfaction:low

Wheels and rims upgrades

Modifying the look of your vehicle is pretty expensive. But if the body of your car looks nice, there is one way to make it look even better - modify the wheels.

While, in some cases, this is all about wheel size and type, the majority of car owners will want to repaint their rims. It's important to find pictures of the vehicles of the needed color and see what rims of certain colors look like.

We've written articles suggesting the best colors of rims for blue vehicles and some other colors. But, in most cases, our articles focused on a certain combination like the white car with white wheels.

My personal favorite combination is the bronze wheels on the white vehicle. While other authors and the CEO of Cararac.com loved the gold rims on black cars. Actually, you will need to use your personal tastes to choose something good.

The question is what kind of material should you use for repainting the wheels? I've written about PlastiDip and also compared it with other options. But new materials keep popping up, so please conduct your own research.

Wheels mods highlights:

• Commonreasons:pursuit of better design
• Average prices:$400 - $2,000
• Average waiting time:3 - 10 days
• Common problems:baddesign, unwanted results, poor painting quality
• DIY mods:possible but very complicated
• Level of satisfaction:medium

Interior mods

Modding the interior of your car is a pretty common solution, especially for older vehicles that have some visible wear and tear on their interior components.

But we mainly focus our attention on the technical side of the vehicle, so we don't write a lot about interior mods. I've written about the 2nd-generation Tacoma modifications and also about the rear-seat mod in the access-cab Tacoma.

But I should say that if you want to modify the interior of your car, you should go to professionals. Otherwise, the mods will most likely be looking pretty bad and their quality will not be something you may be proud of.

Interior mods highlights:

• Commonreasons:more comfort, better design, new functions
• Average prices:$200 - $1,500
• Average waiting time:2 - 6 days
• Common problems:poor quality, unexpected design, poor functioning
• DIY mods:possible but quite complicated
• Level of satisfaction:low

Suspension mods

Again, we don't have a dedicated author for suspension modifications. Our mechanic can tell you everything about the problems and their solutions but mods are the sphere of other experts.

And still, we've written the article about F250 suspension upgrades. And we've also investigated the problem of lifting the new electric truck - the F-150 Lightning.

Of course, suspension modifications should only be carried out professionally. They should be safe and apply only proper parts that won't let you down.

Suspension upgrades highlights:

• Commonreasons:better comfort, lifting, off-road preparation
• Average prices:$700 - $3,500
• Average waiting time:2 - 10 days
• Common problems: low-quality parts,badengineering, unexpected results
• DIY mods:usually,impossible
• Level of satisfaction:medium

Fuel supply upgrades

Upgrading fuel supply systems when seriously modding the engine is inevitable. But sometimes, these upgrades are connected with common problems. Can you disable the EVAP system for example? We've written about this in one of our articles. Also, there's a separate article about the fuel tank breather.

But the majority of you will want some functional upgrades like the additional gas tank in the truck bed. This is also possible and there are kits for this. Also, injector pump mods are very common, especially for modern vehicles with high-pressure fuel supply.

Please keep in mind that all fuel supply mods should only be carried out professionally. Otherwise, they won't be safe for your vehicle and reliable.

Fuel supply upgrades highlights:

• Commonreasons:more power, need for efficient supply, higher pressure
• Average prices:$800 - $2,500
• Average waiting time:2 - 7 days
• Common problems:aftermarket parts problems, issues withbadinstallation
• DIY mods:usually,impossible
• Level of satisfaction:high

EV upgrades

When it comes to EVs, we usually don't write a lot about upgrades because it all comes down to battery capacity extension. 

But there is one EV that is prone to a lot of well-known and widely used upgrades. This is the BMW i3- one of the most popular city EVs. You can upgrade a lot of things and make it more comfortable, faster, and even add range to this vehicle.

EV upgrades highlights:

• Commonreasons:range extension, battery modification, more comfort
• Average prices:$500 - $4,500
• Average waiting time:1 - 4 days
• Common problems:unknown battery life, low-quality aftermarket parts
• DIY mods:impossible
• Level of satisfaction:high