I was thinking about doing some work on my car this summer since I've got some time and money to spare on it - but I'm 19 and I've never really done any major car stuff at all, so I'm wondering if anyone can help me out with some advice or suggestions.
Last year I didn't really want to do anything to this because it's a DX with a y7 engine that puts out a whopping 106 HP - didn't really seems worth it. However, since it looks like I'm going to have this car for a while, I feel like I might as well just work on it, and since I really want to learn my way around cars, I've got to start somewhere.
This is it now:
There's some irritating damage on the back bumper and in particular there's a dent on the back of the trunk that I can't seem to pop out at all
The only thing I've done to this car so far has been to remove the stock intake and put that cheap short ram on
The muffler cracked yesterday - my mufflers for these cars seem to die pretty regularly (once to twice/year) - would it be worth it to replace with aftermarket?
These rims were what came with the car, but they've got all of that bad deterioration on the chrome, and were kind of rough to ride on with stock shocks and springs - I have a feeling that they were kind of raping the suspension when the previous owner drove it. I was thinking of putting them back on though, just because the car handles WAY better with them - do you think it would work if I sanded off all of the s**t on the chrome and painted the rims some other color, or would that just be too much rice?
So really, it boils down to a few questions:
- Is this car even worth putting any money into, as it's a DX with 88,000 miles on it?
- Are those low profile rims going to be really horrible for the suspension if I put them back on, and would it be super cheesy if I tried to paint them black (or maybe red, haha) or something?
- do you think that I, with my limited mechanical experience, could replace the muffler with an aftermarket one successfully? it looks like it just bolts on to the exhaust manifold, so I can't imagine it'd be super-tough, and if you think I can do it, do you have any reccommendations on a decent looking performance muffler that doesn't cost a shitload of money?
- I'm looking to speed up this car a bit, and I'm willing to spend up to around $2500ish to make that happen - what can I do to increase horsepower and how should I do it to do it right?
Thanks in advance!
Last year I didn't really want to do anything to this because it's a DX with a y7 engine that puts out a whopping 106 HP - didn't really seems worth it. However, since it looks like I'm going to have this car for a while, I feel like I might as well just work on it, and since I really want to learn my way around cars, I've got to start somewhere.
This is it now:
There's some irritating damage on the back bumper and in particular there's a dent on the back of the trunk that I can't seem to pop out at all
The only thing I've done to this car so far has been to remove the stock intake and put that cheap short ram on
The muffler cracked yesterday - my mufflers for these cars seem to die pretty regularly (once to twice/year) - would it be worth it to replace with aftermarket?
These rims were what came with the car, but they've got all of that bad deterioration on the chrome, and were kind of rough to ride on with stock shocks and springs - I have a feeling that they were kind of raping the suspension when the previous owner drove it. I was thinking of putting them back on though, just because the car handles WAY better with them - do you think it would work if I sanded off all of the s**t on the chrome and painted the rims some other color, or would that just be too much rice?
So really, it boils down to a few questions:
- Is this car even worth putting any money into, as it's a DX with 88,000 miles on it?
- Are those low profile rims going to be really horrible for the suspension if I put them back on, and would it be super cheesy if I tried to paint them black (or maybe red, haha) or something?
- do you think that I, with my limited mechanical experience, could replace the muffler with an aftermarket one successfully? it looks like it just bolts on to the exhaust manifold, so I can't imagine it'd be super-tough, and if you think I can do it, do you have any reccommendations on a decent looking performance muffler that doesn't cost a shitload of money?
- I'm looking to speed up this car a bit, and I'm willing to spend up to around $2500ish to make that happen - what can I do to increase horsepower and how should I do it to do it right?
Thanks in advance!