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What's Your Worst Small Mod ???

734 views 23 replies 18 participants last post by  mykwillisrn 
#1 ·
What\'s Your Worst Small Mod ???

What's your worst small mod?????......

Please, no bashing vendors or products..... Just the small mod that fell short of your expectations........

Be kind, but truthful.........

Mine was a rear up front with a s/r combo. Until I resolved the steering geometry, it was dangerous to drive. Now all is well and I love it but for a time this combo mod was mine.....
 
#2 ·
Re: What\'s Your Worst Small Mod ???

Heck, I've got plenty of 'em. But my most expensive mistake was made when I first bought my Zuk. It was stock, and had 5 slick tires. So, the first thing I bought for it was 5 new tires... in size P205-15!
Sold them (for half of what I paid) about six months later. Live and learn.
 
#3 ·
Re: What\'s Your Worst Small Mod ???

S/R is a small mod???????? What is big?????

My worst micro mod was a chrome skull shift knob. I didn't have the time or the money to hold out for the polished aluminum one with red crystal eyes, so I got the one from Auto Zone that was solid iron, chrome plated, and had shiny read ocular cavities. I thought it was a cool cheesy accessory, looking like a head on a pike, but:

It came with no threads and only one set screw. I had to figure out how to mount it to make it stay on! (which was a combination of lock tight, drilling a divot, and some silicone so that it didn't do the bobble head thing) The darn thing kept comming off in traffic!

It weighed a ton (well really I'll guess 4 pounds). It was so heavy that large road bumps and almost any offroad obstacle would throw me out of first, third, and (had I the power) fifth. I went a whole Saturday at Barnwell with one hand on the blasted thing and one hand on the wheel.

I finally put the stock one back on, not nearly as fun to look at (especially since it has pipe wrench grip marks and a dent) but at least it does what it is supposed to!
 
G
#4 ·
Re: What\'s Your Worst Small Mod ???

Easy. Jacobs Electronic Ignition. It worked pretty well, when I put it in, but then within a year, all the plug wires fell apart, and the "torquer coil" shorted out, and left me dead - well not really, because I never removed my stock ignition, and kept the coil wire in the glove box, so I just disconnected everything, and hooked the stock ignition back up. I never saw the tremendous performance gains they promised, and the parts lasted until about a week after the end of the warranty.

EDIT: "Cleaned up" to not bash vendors or products QUITE SO MUCH as Crow Horse originally intended.
 
#5 ·
Re: What\'s Your Worst Small Mod ???

When I first lifted my Hardtop I had a set of really nice ARE Outlaw 2 rims installed with my 31"Coopers. As you all know, backspacing options are really limited with any aluminium wheel so the tires rubbed ALL the time off-road and on. This is before I discovered this forum and the multitude of vendors other than the one I bought my lift from. Had I known about the wheel spacers available at the time, I would'nt have had to sell them to buy the steel wheelsI have on it now.
 
G
#6 ·
Re: What\'s Your Worst Small Mod ???

I have to agree with Bob - my Jacobs Ignition was the worst POS I had ever spent money on........stupid thing fried out in about a year also - with no noticeable power gains or mpg increases when it did work!
 
#7 ·
Re: What\'s Your Worst Small Mod ???

Good post Idea Crow, We learn more from mistakes than successes!

Hmmm. The only one that jumps to mind is my cobbled up magnet mount for my CB antenna. I used a
good magnet base, put a little aluminum angle on it so it would set more vertically on the side of the targa,
isolated the antenna properly (I used an old 3' loaded and spring mounted antenna I had laying around).
used some clear packing tape on the magnet surface to prevent scratches on targa.

I used new RG8 cable and hooked it up. It matched up with minimal tuning to very near 1:1 match so
I was getting no appreciable loss of power, too cool!

First drive it vibrated around and was pointing to the ground at a 45 deg angle or so. Ok, I figured
it was just the wind, so I took some fishing line and gave it a front guy wire to the passenger side hood
stop on the windshield frame. Now it vibrated its way down the targa, as all I had done was add a new
vibration to it. So I added a light spring near the WS frame to the guy wire. That seemed to give it
some stability. Until the first dirt road. The vibrations made it fall forward and slide down the targa.

I guess I'll have a CB when I finish the cargo rack and get a permanent mounting point. That magnet
would work on a flat horizontal surface, but wont hold on the side of the targa at all!
 
#8 ·
Re: What\'s Your Worst Small Mod ???

Having someone else do my exhaust. The bone head did a crap job all around except for the muffler to pipe welds. I get fumed bad.. Header collector is trash, exhaust hangers broke, and exhaust is not pointed in the right dirrection! Argh, sounds cool though.
 
#9 ·
Re: What\'s Your Worst Small Mod ???

Easy...

Using Jeep springs and Ford shock mounts on MY SUZUKI!

I have since lost the Ford crap, and will soon lose the Jeep junk too. But I picking up D44 knuckles, so I guess that will become my worst "small" mod.
 
#10 ·
Re: What\'s Your Worst Small Mod ???

I think mine would fall into the general category of buying stuff I didnt need because I was too eager and didnt do enough research first.

The first part was the wheel and tire combo. I bought 5 31x10.50x15 mud tires on chrome 15x7 wheels when my sami was still stock. they still wouldnt fit on it now, almost two years later. I used the wheels and got some more appropriately sized tires, but the 31s are still in my yard. I've gotten lots of bites, but they are still here (250$ or interesting trade)

I got a spare steering box off ebay to replace my leaky one. I havent put it in and will probably go to tracker/kick PS before I ever replace it. I probably could have gotten a spare free, too.

I got a spare gas tank off ebay to replace my leaky one. When I went to replace it I found the same fitting rusted off on the spare. duh.

I bought a welded rear diff on Ebay thinking it would be cheap and easy to pop it in every spring and pop it back out every fall. It still in my basement and I am inclined not to put it in at all. I'll wait for the selectables.

got a used grant GT wheel on ebay but it was too small. Not enough leverage on the trail and couldnt see my guages on the street. Replaced with another larger grant wheel.

there's probably more, but I am starting to depress myself.



~daxe
 
#11 ·
Re: What\'s Your Worst Small Mod ???

The worst mod was my first lift attempt. I used some CJ schackles to lift it enough to put 235s on. The lift worked, but I found out what riding inside a cement mixer felt like. The second mistake was installing 4:56 gears. Broke the ring gear the first time out. Went back to the stock ratio, put in a GRS 2, and it's been happy motoring ever since.
 
G
#16 ·
Re: What\'s Your Worst Small Mod ???

OK, I have to re-think this after what 87Zuke said.

I STARTED doing mods on my 4-door. In January, I bought my 2-door off e-bay in Dallas. Since then, I have spent more on mods, than I did on the vehicle. Yeah, buying that 2-door was the BIG STEP over the edge. What have I done?

 

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#22 ·
Re: What\'s Your Worst Small Mod ???

howdy,
buying a upper rear shock mount that i don't like, buying lower rear shock mounts that won't work with the upper shock, due to the way i run my shocks. buying perches that are overkilled rather than overdesigned, also copies of someone else's. and the worst thing i have ever done to my baby is buying from a company i didn't know of their past and at the time i was not a member of this board.
big thing i ever did was get you weber cd.
 
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