- Bring 'em out! (laughs) Bring 'em out, bring 'em out. (laughs) Let's go ahead and throw
it back a few years to when we were 16 again, or if you're watching this and you are 16, just, well yeah. There you are, looking at the red Neon SXT that you thought was just,
like, the coolest thing ever. Thinking to yourself, man,
there's a bunch of cool stuff for these cars out there. Why does no one do anything to these? Why does everyone keep 'em stocked? There's so much cool stuff. So you hop on the internet, punch in 2005 Neon SXT, after
market, into the search bar, and armed with the your
crisp $230 paycheck from your fast food job, and you start just dumping
parts into your shopping cart. If I could go back and
tell myself just one thing, I would go back to that time, tell myself, "just don't." And watch today's episode
of the Build Sheet where we are going to be
talking about performance mods that you should probably
just stay away from. (heavy techno music with tool sounds) I'm Gels from Fitment Industries. Don't forget to subscribe. Wheels, tires, and suspension. You know, the thing that we do,
we specialize in, that thing FitmentIndustries.com. Anyway, when we go ahead
and look into the world of performance parts,
or mods, for our cars, we're usually flooded
by a list of suggestions from companies that have names
that just make you cringe. The unfortunate truth is
that there are a lot of parts out there that just don't do a damn thing, but they're cheap and
they're marketed well, and they'll talk you right into it. Remember that thing, like stranger danger? You should probably apply that
same principle here as well. If you haven't heard of it, you probably should stay away from it. - Look, just get in the car. I'll go and I'll take you
to your dad's shop, okay? He's busy right now, alright? Just, look, come on, hurry up. Get in, I gotta get--
- No. - Because the first thing
we're probably guilty of is picking up a short
ram intake for our cars. You know exactly which
ones I'm talking about. And those who are watching
and have bought one of those monstrosities are sitting
there having flashbacks of when you were installing yours, and the stupid rubber hose
connector piece, like, just was like, that much
smaller than the throttle body, and you ended up using,
like, a screwdriver, to like, shoehorn the damn thing
onto the throttle body and just, like, scuffed up everything, and it tore but you just ran with it 'cause it was, like, a $50 part and it was like $40 for
that one part that broke. Short ram intakes are
usually sold anywhere from around, like, 50 to like, $150, which is one of the reasons
why they're so popular. People go searching for
a proper cold air intake and they see the cost of that $300-$600 and instantly bounce back
to the cheaper option. Usually these intakes sit
right off the throttle body of your engine and have
completely exposed cone filter that sucks in all of the heat of your engine
bay from the header. I mean usually, sometimes
they'll just sit, like, literally right next to the header. It may look cool, it may sound cool. You get some cool induction
noises, but unfortunately, if you're looking at it as a
performance aspect to your car, you're probably not
gonna get much out of it. The next mod you should stay away from, or at least be a little cautious of, would be a performance chip. Now I know that there are
legitimate, like, chips out there for performance
and are usually useful for older cars and things like that. But the ones that I'm talking
about are like the $50 old Game Boy-looking game things that you just slap right into the OBD-II and promise that you get a gain
of, like, 15-20 horsepower. And guess what? They don't really work. Gels, yes it does. Like, it's more responsive now. I can totally feel it,
like, the butt dyno. It's there, it works. It's just about as useful
as putting a Dorito chip into your OBD-II. I guarantee if you put that car on a dyno with that cheapo
performance chip installed, the computer that's reading the machine is literally just going
to laugh in your face. Now don't get me wrong here, a proper tune is totally worth it. We've talked about it in the past. And don't get chip confused
with things such as an access port, or another
type of custom tuning platform. What usually happens is, again, people get a little sticker shocked when they see that $600 price
tag on a COBB Accessport. Now if you have ever worked
in a parts store before, you're probably be pretty
familiar with the next performance mod that some
people want to do to their car, and that is spark plugs and plug wires. I'm not exactly sure where the thought that dropping some new zappy
boys with some thicker wires would increase horsepower came from, but I'm pretty sure it starts with the heat range of spark plugs. And the conversation usually
goes something like this. Hi there, how can I help you today? Yeah bro, I'm looking
for some new spark plugs for my Honda Accord. I'm looking for something
that's gonna make me go faster, like those double platinum
super duper iridium things. I want nothing but the best. I wanna get another, like,
5 horsepower out of the car. I heard it's the best way to do it. Oh, and I'll take some of
those green spark plug wires 'cause they'll match my wheels, too. Hell yeah. The truth is spark plugs can actually make a little
bit of a difference, but not necessarily in the way that you would probably think. Spark plugs are meant for
one thing and one thing only, and that is to provide an
ignition source for your engine. And when you get into the
heat range side of things when talking about spark plugs, it is typically referred to as
being a hotter or colder plug and that's kind of where the confusion technically starts to set in. Typically naturally aspirated
platforms will require a hotter plug due to higher
combustion temperatures and more lean of a burn. When on the other hand,
with boosted platforms, it is more typical to run a colder plug because the more rich
air and fuel mixture. We see that a lot in
the focus ST platforms, people running colder plugs. So in the sense of switching
out old and worn plugs to new plugs, or just
adjusting the heat range to kind of correlate with
your engine platform, you can get an increase in performance, but usually it's not anything
noticeable or braggable. And then last, but certainly not least, of parts just to not, just stay away from. I can't say I've ever
actually seen one of these out in the wild. (video game music) But they're out there. And it's those electric, like, intake turbo supercharger fan tube things that you put in your intake. For right around $70 you
can pick up one of these jet engine-looking (bleep) things, and stick it right into
the intake of your car. And in theory, it would make sense. You're pushing more air into the engine, kind of like a turbo, except for the fact that it
doesn't compress the air at all. The key factor in boosting an engine, whether that be turbocharger,
ProCharger, supercharger, whatever it be, is that they are designed
to introduce more air into your engine in the
form of compression. Similar to a jet engine, there are compressor
blades inside of a turbo. Like, you can literally take a turbo and turn it into a jet engine. And I swear to God, I saw
a guy do it on YouTube. Whereas these fan things
are literally just that. You'd be better off
hooking up an old box fan that you bought in college
into the front of your car and hope for the best. What it all comes down to is that if something sounds too good to be true, and it usually is. And if that doesn't add, like,
another 20 years onto my age, I don't know what does. But unfortunately, $50 isn't going to add a bunch of horsepower to your car. Car parts are pricey, and
quality parts are worth it. So if you're looking at picking
up some parts for your car, don't be afraid to wait
that little bit extra, save a little bit extra cash, and make sure that what you're getting is not only actually
beneficial to your car, but is actually what you're expecting. Because even though those prices may seem convincing at first, after a while they add up, and then you're stuck with a car with a bunch of weird
pieces and odds and ends, and it kind of confuses people
as it drives down the road, and it confuses people at car
meets when you pop the hood and they see just random
(bleep) poking everywhere. And then you look kind of silly, and we don't want you to look silly. So go ahead and drop a comment down below if you've made the mistake in the past about picking up some
maybe not so beneficial, or maybe some fake performance parts. Drop in down in the comments below, or if there's something that
we left out of this list that you think should be in the list, drop it down there as well. But I'm Gels from Fitment Industries. Don't forget to subscribe. Wheels, tires, suspension,
you know the thing. FitmentIndustries.com. But that's gonna wrap it up for today. We will see you later. Peace.
