What’s the most reliable performance upgrade you’ve done?
Posted by Gold-Industry6222@reddit | projectcar | View on Reddit | 45 comments
Not the biggest or most powerful, just something that actually worked consistently without causing other issues.
Something that:
Improved performance
Didn’t mess with reliability
Held up long-term
Curious what upgrades people have had the best experience with.
Dr_Ramekins_MD@reddit
Stripped weight off the car.
Sure, it's louder and hotter in the cabin now, but things you remove can't break, and presumably you'll have less wear on suspension, brake, and driveline parts as a result too
jetheridge87@reddit
In my old mustang, I could yank out close to 200lbs after work before hitting the backroads. The whole driving dynamic changed instantly.
FewStill3958@reddit
Driver mod.
My lines are tighter. My trail braking and threshold braking has substantially improved. I no longer have any fear of excess oversteer on corner exits.
acid_etched@reddit
Rear sway bar, good tires, and fresh factory suspension.
Maintenance too, but you shouldn’t even be thinking about mods if you haven’t gone through that yet.
Quint27A@reddit
Swapped in disk brakes on my 63 C10. Made a world of difference!
SD_CA@reddit
A vortec supercharger for my mustang in the early 2000s. It worked great until I put a smaller pulley, bigger injectors and an intercooler in.
But it ran flawlessly for a few years. Until I decided I needed more power.
christianhelps@reddit
Steel brake lines.
Funderstruck@reddit
Best bang for your buck for all of that is a driver mod. Followed by tires.
Entire-Extreme7327@reddit
You mean like reducing 10 lbs of sprung weight from one’s arse, followed by tires, right?
masterventris@reddit
That's a big morning shit my man
8N-QTTRO@reddit
If we're talking reliability, the mechanic mod is a big help too.
IronSlanginRed@reddit
Old man emu suspension.
fatitalianstallion@reddit
Strange way to spell King. OME is a budget starter brand.
IronSlanginRed@reddit
King is for large lifts, coilovers, 4link swaps. Not exactly improving reliability on a daily driver. They are really nice though.
Old man emu makes high quality weight matched leaf springs. Sure since 4wheelparts bought them they have slapped their name on some normal ass shocks, but they still make very high quality daily driver suspension that also has load capacity increases. And they ride like butter.
nopester24@reddit
Tires
87eebboo1@reddit
This 100%. I dropped like $600 on a set of Goodyear eagle f1 ds-g3 back in the 00s for my vr6 gti and they were absolutely amazing. The grip was crazy and everything about the car got better. They seemed to perform just as well in rain too. Easily the most cost effective modification in terms of performance gains
Badass_1963_falcon@reddit
Air in and exhaust out so make it breath better and get the exhaust out faster and easier improves fuel economy and power
ferraricare@reddit
New tires and losing weight.
tlivingd@reddit
Disc and power front brakes. Had 4 wheel drums non power when I started. With more cars on the road and everyone driving like an asshole it’s a necessity.
Sure you leave more following distance but that extra distance is just cut you off distance to others.
Yes they’d stop right now in a panic but brake fade is a thing. And they’d pull in random directions during hard stops.
largos7289@reddit
headers, intake, exhaust. Once you get rid of the factory BS you'll find the car breathes better and is no longer setup for choking the crap out of the engine. They say they build for performance but then they use log style, cast iron boat anchors for exhaust manifolds. Improving the intake runners makes the air flow better then the ability to get that expelled exhaust out faster and efficiently makes the world of difference. What really gets me is they "could" sell it to you that way factory, but they won't because then there is no incentive for you to buy the upgraded model with it already installed. That or the aftermarket would tank.
Street-Run4107@reddit
Tires and brakes.
Acceptable-Luck-4275@reddit
Lower temp oil cooler thermostats on my RX8; along with aluminum radiator.
passim@reddit
Smaller supercharger pulley on an R53 mini. Bulletproof fun.
straight_sixes@reddit
15 years ago I started tracking all vehicle maintenance in Google docs. I've been at 10+ vehicles for a while now and I do literally everything myself short of paint.
I started keeping detailed logs of what I did, when I did it, any modifications I made during the repair, sometimes I write down what tools I used (especially if it's out of the ordinary), where I sourced the parts, what brand of parts I purchased. I try to link a picture of the receipt as well.
Theres all kinds of paid and free apps I'm sure. I use a multi-million dollar maintenance program at work that would sure be nice to have for my car projects...but I digress.
It's not uncommon for a project to sit on the back burner for a couple of years and if I'm doing my documentation correctly, I can read my old notes and pick up exactly where I left off.
I'm an engineer and when I take over an existing design project I love nothing more than reading detailed notes of someone else's thought process so I'm trying for present me to make future me happy.
Ready_Jury6144@reddit
Knew that by your first sentence lol
rdm55@reddit
Replace all flexible brake lines with steel braided ones. Your pedal feel will improve and those old lines needed to go anyway.
JCDU@reddit
V8+EFI swap - double the power, better driveability, and better MPG over the old lump.
juwyro@reddit
JDM EJ203 swapped my Saabaru. The 253 was needing a second set of head gaskets, and burning a lot of oil. The 203 needs zero babysitting and is drop in and ready to go for theost part. It also has 120k less miles than the 253. There's a small loss in power but it still moves the car around just fine.
Ok_Narwhal6356@reddit
Disc brake conversion for a drum brake car.
TheGrandMasterFox@reddit
Add a bit of the devils brew (aka Hydrazine) to your fuel tank... It's a renewable resource and the pretty green flame is proof.
Complaint_Manager@reddit
My girl sitting in the passenger seat. Meets all of your question criteria. Definitely my most reliable performance upgrade.
wearymicrobe@reddit
Suspension and gearing for purpose.
OlYeller01@reddit
This is model specific, but tossing an S197 Mustang’s clunky, incredibly heavy 2 piece driveshaft w/carrier bearing is one of the BEST mods you can do. Go for a one piece driveshaft, properly set up of couse. It makes the car so much quieter and so much easier & enjoyable to drive.
Besides that I agree with others on suspension upgrades. It’s also incredibly rewarding to feel the difference 5 minutes into your first drive post-install.
Pizpot_Gargravaar@reddit
Tires, brakes, swaybars. In that order.
4x4Welder@reddit
On everything: A free flowing exhaust with a rear exit. A Flowmaster, maybe a resonator if it winds up a little droney, and pointing straight out the back instead of down or to the side reduces cabin noise massively. My Taurus with this setup is quieter inside now than with the stock muffler and downturn below the rear bumper. Picked up a solid 2mpg from building a better 2" Y pipe with a 2 1/2" flex and piping instead of the stock all 1 7/8" stuff.
For comfort: Smaller rims, bigger sidewalls. Max out the caster, give it a touch of toe in, and a little bit of camber in the rear for a nice calm cruiser. Opposite caster and toe if you want a corner carver, but keep the rear camber.
For economy: Airflow management. A cap on my F250 made hauling the camper much more efficient. A grille cover gave me another 2mpg on the Taurus, I first played around with duct tape and eventually had a smooth plane from the bumper to the hood that gave the best results, now I'm putting together a nice piece of acrylic to make it look a bit more modern too.
For off road: A 4x4 conversion on my Courier 😁
basicKitsch@reddit
Reducing unsprung weight. Went from 26lb wheels at all four corners to a set of ssr type cs at just under 20. Literally everything you do feels better at that point.
D0z3rD04@reddit
2011 Silverado with the 4l60e. I had it rebuilt to have all heavy duty parts, a Corvette fluid servo, shift kit, bigger kevlar band, 3&4th gear be high friction rings, and the planetary gears swapped from 4 to 5. I wanted a transmission I'd never have to touch again on the truck. I have a trans cooler that is gonna go on aswell.
Entire-Extreme7327@reddit
Learning how to drive better (shifting better, braking hard and smooth, transitions in corners, modulating the gas, reading the road, loading front vs rear tires, etc.) has made EVERYTHING other component perform better. And when you do everything smoother, it breaks fewer things too.
jayfactor@reddit
Coilovers, I can’t say more great things about Ksport, had them on my daily, now putting them on my project build
Sweet_Speech_9054@reddit
A mild nitrous setup is always good. But tires are the best performance upgrade you can make. And if you want something that lasts long you can have a track set and a road set.
plaugedoctrwithradar@reddit
Tires
Sea-Big-1125@reddit
Pedal Commander is a good one for sure
8N-QTTRO@reddit
New suspension, when done right, is number one. Feels great, puts less wear on the rest of the components (at least compared to your old blown-out suspension), and almost always has a major performance improvement, too.
A few others I would toss in are any engine internal mods (when done right) and upgrades to engine cooling: Radiators, intercoolers, and oil coolers are all huge upgrades with hardly any downsides when done properly. Especially if you're replacing decades-old plastic with brand-new metal. Replacing rubber with silicone and removing unnecessary vacuum lines (i.e. overcomplicated emissions equipment and electronic boost management) are also big ones, since it all significantly reduces the likelihood of vacuum leaks. However, anything with OBD2 will often require a lot of programming to keep running properly once you've simplified things.
beermaker@reddit
Tied between my 4 wheel disc brake & EFI conversions... Both have racked up 11k miles without a problem.
HSLB66@reddit
Suspension. One of the best bang for buck upgrades too