Hacker News Reader

Comment by jerlam | Hacker News Reader

Many of the mods make the car worse in everyday environments, outside of a pristine track.

After I got into my friend's modded-out car, we had to slow to walking speeds to exit the parking lot because it would bottom out on the curb cut. The same happens with speed bumps. Large rims get damaged on potholes that a normal tire and rim combo would just shrug off.

Add a few years to your life and you don't want to crawl and duck into a low car anymore. Stiff suspensions are hard on the back and joints.

View on HN

But it's fun to mod the car and you get to drive around in an art project. My dad did basically the same thing during the 1950's and 60's hot rod culture. This is more or less what his car looked like:

https://www.hotrod.com/features/1932-ford-roadster-the-golde...

He never had a lot of money to spend on it but he did have access to car parts and was a gifted mechanic. One of my favorite memories was going out for a ride in that thing in the summer with him and I would ask him to go faster and he would wind it up to about 120 mph for a few miles and it was so exciting (and, in retrospect, a bad idea). He would tell me he had to do that occasionally to get the carbon out. :)

The author here didn’t even recount doing any work on his car or demonstrate any real knowledge of basic mechanics. Just talks about the high-end shops that did the work.

He did a great job painting himself as completely self-absorbed and lacking in personality that he’s making up with consooming. Down to the whining and performative identitarian victimization. Like if you just enjoy cars and love your Vietnamese-American hyphen culture awesome do that. But this whole article reeks of LOOK AT ME.

That's a pretty harsh take.

"art project" <-- eyes rolling collectively

Similar with lifted trucks.

Lifts are bad for driveshafts, suspension, tires, etc

Well there's right ways to do them, where you replace all the weak components with properly strengthened components, and geometry fixing components, and then there's the wrong way to do them, which is what 99% of people do, where they just do a cheap lift, without upgrading the other components, and eventually it fails.

Probably the primary reason why vehicles like Jeeps get a bad reputation - they're incredibly commonly modded, and incredibly horribly/improperly modded, and the vehicle gets the blame when the mods fail, rather than the horrible things the owner did to them.

Average quality and reliability ratings even on new, unmodified Jeeps are abysmal. I understand why some consumers like them for style and off-road capability but overall it's a trash brand.

Some people actually do track their cars, though.

It’s a very small percentage of these vehicles though.

yeah, majority of people just want to have something that is capable of doing cool stuff, but can't really commit to actually doing it. it's like how so many buy and tune WRXs, but don't actually take it to gravel roads.

TBH most of the mods that really make people point and laugh won't fare very well on a track or rally stage either.

20-inch wheels aren't capable of cool stuff. It's all peacocking.

wdym, what else am I going to use to crush my enemies /s

> 20-inch wheels aren't capable of cool stuff. It's all peacocking.

You should let Porsche and Chevy know that all the lap records they set with the GT3 RS and ZR1 could be even faster with some proper wheels ;)

> it's like how so many buy and tune WRXs, but don't actually take it to gravel roads.

For good reason, they're not built for it. A relatively stock WRX is going to be destroyed after a few outings of hard driving on rough terrain[1]. The WRC winning Subarus[2] were fully built racecars from top to bottom and share only styling with the ones sold at dealerships. They're very fun and capable on solid pavement for a cheap car, but the rally pedigree is all marketing.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT-o8vuhRok

[2] https://cars.bonhams.com/auction/27996/lot/87/1999-subaru-im...

I mean yeah, stock is one thing, but when WRX owners build it out, it's usually slammed and sometimes embarrassing levels of negative camber. Rally builds are rare, even though the AWD and (for the current gen WRX) the cladding would suit it.

Fashion that makes things impractical is often quite sticky.

When the first people drove mountain bikes in the city I thought it was fad that would quickly go away but here we are. Ok, they were an improvement over the previous fad of racing bikes, but neither of them is as practical in the city as they could be.

The potholes in the city of Berkeley make me glad I have a hybrid bike.

I see this all the time where I live. People doing their grocery shopping in their super stanced out civic, having to find a route around the speed bumps because they literally can't go over them without high centering.

Yeah, it looks sick. But it's completely impractical for daily driving, and quite frankly you are putting both yourself and others at risk the moment you blow a tire going 80 on the freeway and lose control of your car.

> it looks sick

Personally I'll take a sedan or wagon with ample ground clearance any day: https://images.classic.com/vehicles/559a40ae72662e1ac71d2286...

>I see this all the time where I live. People doing their grocery shopping in their super stanced out civic, having to find a route around the speed bumps because they literally can't go over them without high centering.

I hate that less than the upper middle class types that slow their $50k Highlander/Pilot/Range Rover a crawl to drive over them.

Why would you blow a tire? What are you on about? It's dangerous to blow a tire in any car.

I mean mods are always about tradeoffs. You're generally not smarter than the team of engineers that designed it, but you probably do have different goals, that's where the opportunity to improve an aspect of the car comes in.

I think it should be done with a clear understanding of what you're giving up, but some people don't want to put practicality first and that's okay.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com