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A Beginners Guide to Modifying A Car. It's easy for a seasoned car guy to give advice on what he or she thinks is best when it comes to modifying your car or truck, but many times that advice is biased based on their own belief of what is best and based on what they read on their forum. What a beginner needs is advice that comes from the basics of automotive performance and what makes or doesn't make power. It's hard not to get tied up in manufacture claims, so we're going to create this guide on what every beginner should know when it comes to modifying their car for the first time, or even picking a platform to modify. Back in the day, street rods were built based on bigger is better. Today, with technology being at the forefront of automotive performance, bigger isn't necessarily better. Today it's about creating power from a lean and mean engine in addition to a lightweight chassis that both work with well together. Why it's important to plan your mods. Many of our customers, and myself included, like to buy parts on a feel good basis. We want that intake or want that exhaust because we want the car to sound good, and make more power. But then we find later that we decide to go a different route, and then all of a sudden the exhaust is too small or too big, and the intake won't work any more. At that point we've learned that we wasted money and should have come up with a plan first on what goals we have for the vehicle. Do we want a car for drag racing? Auto. X? Road Racing? Street Performance? Every setup would be different here, so planning that out would help you to not only save money, but ensure the parts you purchase work well together and compliment each other. Select your platform. ![]() If you don't already have a car or truck to modify, then you need to decide first which platform you are going to go for before you come up with a path. Again, this comes down to deciding what type of racing or performance you want from your car. Many of us already know that we want an import or domestic, and a specific brand. Others are limited by budget or other criteria. For flat out power, nothing beat starting with a platform that is already turbo from the factory, or already has a V8 motor. Some examples of great platforms to start your mods: Subaru WRX or Subaru WRX STi. Mitsubishi Lancer EVO (all generations)Mitsubishi Eclipse Turbo (FWD or AWD) and Eagle Talon or Plymouth Laser. Mazdaspeed. 3Ford Mustang. Features. K&N 69 Series Typhoon Intake Systems are designed to amp the power of your sport compact ride; Adds up to 15 horsepower for pavement-ripping performance. Chevy Camaro. Corvette (C5 Z0. Dodge Charger or Challenger. Nissan 3. 50. Z or Nissan 3. ZNissan 2. 40. SX (great drifting platform)Honda Civic / Acura Integra (Great platform for anything other than drfiting)Toyota Supra Turbo (can be had for a good price now).. The above list is just an example of good platforms on a budget. Sure you can go the more expensive route and go straight for a Nissan GT- R, but the majority of people won't go that route, and so we won't explore that platform in specific. Our goal here is to give you general advice that you can use on any platform. Drag Racing. So, you decided that drag racing is for you? Welcome to a highly competitive world primarily dominated by high horsepower. The goal of drag racing is to get your car down 1. This means your car needs to be as light as possible, launch as hard as possible, and have as much useable power as possible. Typically, drag race setups are not very comfortable on the street. If you have a front wheel drive, you will need a good set of slicks and a limited slip differential. You can't drive around with slicks on the street (typically), so you will need a special setup of wheels and tires for the track. If your car is rear wheel drive, you can get away with using street slicks, but for serious drag racers, this might not work. You'd want to setup your suspension to keep the rear stiffer than the front, so as the weight transfers to the back for launch it helps with traction. Brakes aren't too important except you want to be able to stop at the end of the drag strip. Road Racing. Unlike with drag racing, road racing not only requires power, but requires all around incredible handling and braking. Where as drag racing requires only 1. Cars that are lightweight and handle/brake well could have faster lap times than cars making twice the power, so it's really a game of balance. For competitive use, you'd need to get a set of road racing tires and a set of wheels to go with it, as tires are extremely important. Once the brakes and suspension are ready to go, you'd want power to match. The key here is balance, you don't want a car that has more power than the chassis can handle, more power than the brakes can handle, or more brakes than power. Start road racing with a bone stock car, then add race tires the next time you are out, and then start to modify your car. You'll appreciate your car much more when starting road racing with a stock vehicle. Auto. XAutocross or Auto. X really wears out your tires from parking lot racing. You'd want a car that is nimble, has good torque, and a usable power band as most of the time your speeds will be under 6. This type of racing is usually around 1- 2 minutes at a time. Most important here would be your tires and your suspension setup. Tires are an interesting aspect here because with 1- 2 minutes of racing they don't really get much of a chance to warm up. So you would need to get tires that are able to handle well on gravel and heat up quickly. A typical road racing or street suspension should be plenty for a fun Auto. X day. Safety. Safety is extremely important, and you would need a fire extinguisher, and possibly a roll cage depending on the performance of your car, and the type of racing you choose. You would also need a helmet and possibly a 4 or 5 point safety harness. You also need to make sure you have great brakes.. Many cars brake well with just upgraded rotors and pads, others need a whole new big brake kit. Planning your modifications. Now that you know the general idea of what you need for each type of racing, you need to decide what route you are going to take with modifying your car. Below we will touch on the basics of some of the major areas of modification and you can decide which is right for you, and which is within your budget. Not all of these modifications need to be done at once, but some will require a mod or two before you go to the next step, so plan that out too. Intake System. Ok, so one of the basics would be the intake system. If your car is not turbo but you are going to add a turbo to it later, skip the intake. When you get a turbo, the intake system is completely redone, so the old intake you had won't work with the new system any more. Also, if you go with a turbo kit, most of the kits come with an intake kit for it. Should I get a drop in air filter? If you are never going to modify your car past an air filter, then sure. An air filter such as a K& N is a good way for an extra 1- 2 horsepower and it's an air filter that you won't have to replace again for a lifetime, but it's not going to give you nearly as much power as a short ram or cold air intake. Short Ram Intake vs Cold Air Intake - What's the difference? This is a big question we get asked a lot. A short ram intake has a shorter intake tube, and typically has the air filter in plain sight under the hood. For some applications this is fine, but for others this isn't as efficient as a cold air intake, because a cold air intake actually has a longer air tube that literally relocates the air filter away from the engine as far as possible, sometimes into the fender, to draw in cooler air. Short Ram intakes have been known to not create as much power since they take in so much of the engine's heat. Short ram intakes are less expensive, and also depending on the car or truck, they might find that a short ram intake with an air box works just as well or better than a cold air so only a short ram might be available. If both are available we always recommend the cold air intake. Since the cold air intake is usually far from the engine, it can be low to the ground. This causes the air filter to sometimes suck in water if you run over puddles or live in a area that rains a lot. Due to this many cold air intakes have an available air bypass valve that solves this problem. Exhaust System. The louder the exhaust the more power it makes, right? Wrong. Just because an exhaust is loud doesn't mean that car is making more power than a similar car with a quieter exhaust. AMD's Vega Graphics Cards Could Kick Off a War. Every nerd loves a good tech war: Windows vs Mac, Apple vs Android, Intel vs AMD. They give us something to armchair argue about over beers with friends—or to rant over in the comments of illustrious tech blogs. After spending the weekend playing with AMD’s new Vega 6. Vega 5. 6 graphics cards, I think I can safely say an old tech war is back on—even if AMD’s latest salvo feels paltry. Nvidia might be leading the discrete graphics card industry, but AMD’s two newest cards are cheap and fast enough to finally compete. And that can only mean good things for PC users. Price$4. 00 (Vega 5. Vega 6. 4)What is it? Discrete GPUs that are competing against graphics titan Nvidia. No Like. Don't expect any flash. AMD, which purchased Nvidia’s previous competitor, ATI Graphics, has been losing the GPU war for a while. Nvidia is currently producing the majority of discrete graphics cards found in computers today. According to Jon Peddie Research, by the end of 2. Nvidia had more than 7. AMD trailed far behind with just 2. So AMD decided to focus on building cheap cards to go in cheap machines—like the 5. I reviewed back in April. The AMD Vega 6. 4 and Vega 5. Nvidia 1. 08. 0 with cheaper options that start to approximate its performance. When the Vega microarchitecture the cards are based on was announced back at CES, people didn’t immediately leap out of their seats. AMD didn’t have a cool hook like when Nvidia announced it had spent “billions” to develop its latest card. All AMD had was a promise of speed when the cards arrived this summer. Eight months later, the Vega 6. The AMD Vega 6. 4 retails for $5. AMD Vega 5. 6 retails for $4. Both also have 8. GB of RAM built in. The big difference between the two is the number of compute units—think of those like the cores in a CPU (the more the better). The Vega 6. 4 has 6. Vega 5. 6 has 5. 6. When I compared the Vegas to the 1. I found was far less exciting that what I’d hoped for. While the AMD Vega 6. Instead it was sort of like going to the car lot and having to choose between a Honda Civic or a Toyota Corolla. They’re both very nice, cost the same, and do the same damn thing. What was really astounding was the performance of the $4. AMD Vega 5. 6. Despite being considerably cheaper than both the Vega 6. Nvidia 1. 08. 0, it played Overwatch and Civilization VI only marginally slower. The 1. 08. 0 managed 1. Overwatch on Ultra at 4. K, the the Vega 6. Vega 5. 6 pulled of 9. K with the graphics cranked to Ultra. That’s not just a little respectable, that’s really damn good. In Civilization VI the difference was even smaller, with the Vega 5. Vega 6. 4. In one case the Vega 5. Nvidia 1. 08. 0, and was on par with the more expensive Vega 6. When I rendered a frame in Blender, graphics software that allows you to create large 3. D images that heavily tax a discrete GPU, the Nvidia 1. The Vega 6. 4 rendered the same frame in 9 minutes and 2. The Vega 5. 6? Just 9 minutes and 2. With that kind of neck and neck performance there’s no reason to really buy either a Nvidia 1. Vega 6. 4 over the Vega 5. But speed isn’t the only factor to consider when buying a discrete graphics card. See, the cards that go in your desktop PC are very power hungry. If your power supply can’t provide enough juice, the GPU is worthless, and that is one place Nvidia performs far better than AMD every time. The Nvidia 1. 08. The Vega 5. 6 requires 2. Vega 6. 4 requires a whopping 2. All the extra juice means you have to use not one, but two 8- pin power connectors from your power supply. The Nvidia 1. 08. With the new Vega cards AMD is trying to get around the power constraints of it GPUs by offering some software solutions. The first, and most notable, is the Radeon Chill feature, and it’s actually sort of clever. It operates under the assumption that people don’t really need the fastest video card, they just need one fast enough for their monitor. Both AMD and Nvidia have a technology that allows cards to “sync” with monitors to deliver top- level graphics without straining the GPU (Nvidia calls its tech G- Sync, while AMD calls it Free. Sync). But you have to have a special monitor that works with the syncing technology and no monitor works with both the AMD and Nvidia sync tech. Radeon Chill works with any monitor. You simply tell it how many frames you actually want to see per second. Got a monitor that refreshes 6. Set the max to 6. Radeon Chill makes magic happen. In addition, the software doesn’t try and churn out 6. Instead it recognizes moments with static visuals and dramatically cuts down on how much power is being used—and you can tweak the number as well. Want it to never go below 3. Just set the slider in the AMD software. AMD added other software features that give users a better ability to throttle their cards without diminishing visuals. There’s a power saver mode which allows you to force the cards to sip as little as 1. Frame Rate Target Control mode that lets you cap the frames per second; and an Enhanced Sync mode that figures out the optimal frame to display on screen, even if it means skipping a few other frames. All these features make the AMD Vega cards feel incredibly practical versus the excess and overclocking shenanigans of Nvidia. It’s as if AMD is trying to say “if you want nose bleed speed go with Nvidia, but if you want control and a nice experience join us.” That’s a reasonable sale to an old woman such as myself. I play my games on 4. K TVs that have no syncing technology (though Microsoft suggests that could change next year) and can only show between 6. I don’t need dual video cards or crazy numbers, I need good enough. And the AMD Vega 6. AMD Vega 5. 6 are good enough. If you’re looking for a reasonably priced card the AMD Vega 5. But these cards aren’t enough to lure Nvidia loyalists or the power hungry away. As the latest salvo in the war between Nvidia and AMD goes, the new Vega cards are pretty weak. READMEThese cards are neck and neck with the $5. Nvidia 1. 08. 0 in the speed department. But they natively draw a lot more power. A bevy of software features try to resolve the power issue, but it means you’re effectively throttling your shiny new GPU. SPEC DUMPAMD Vega 6. GB of RAM • 6. 4 compute units • 1. MHz base GPU clock • 4. GB/s memory bandwidth • 2. TFLOPS • 3 x Display. Port • 1 x HDMIAMD Vega 5. GB of RAM • 5. 6 compute units • 1. MHz base GPU clock • 4. GB/s memory bandwidth • 2. TFLOPS • 3 x Display.
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