Aftermarket Car Parts Which Could
Unleash Your Car’s Hidden Power

Skim pages of BangShift Magazine, Superstreet or Motor Trend and you’ll see a never-ending thread of automobiles that look different from what they were when in the showroom. If you’re looking to give your ride a little extra personality and unleash its hidden power, there are a lot of options on the market.

This guide is for the wrencher, the DIY mechanic and any car owner looking to perform some performance upgrades to their car. It provides insight into aftermarket car parts you can bolt, glue or weld onto your ride.

Without further ado, let’s look at the upgrades that are worth your effort and money.

Adjustable Sway Bars

Improving your car’s handling is the first place to start when modifying your car. Replacing your anti-roll bars (front and rear) with one that’s adjustable can help improve any lateral roll and prevent body lean during cornering.

One downside to this upgrade is that bumps on one side are transferred to the other side making for a rougher ride.

Front and rear sway bars come in kits. One from Compare Parts costs less than $600.

Cold Air Intake Kit

A cold air intake does exactly what it sounds like it does. It lets in cooler ambient air, allowing the engine to produce slightly more power. This offers a nominal bump in performance when used with other upgrades to your ride’s fuel and intake systems.

In addition to performance gains, this bolt-on car part visually enhances your engine and adds a notable sound to the engine as it takes in air.

High-Quality Coil-Over Springs

Shock absorbers are hydraulic devices designed to absorb and reduce shock impulses. Along with controlling the rebound movement of your car’s springs and suspension, they ensure that the tires stay in contact with the road surface on bumps and at high speeds.

Installing high-performance coil-overs or lowering springs with adjustable inserts can help improve your car’s handling. We recommend that you avoid going for cheap coil-over suspensions. Choose the suspension setup with caution as it’s easy to end up with one that’s too soft or too firm for your intended use.

Aftermarket coil-over kits that can help you achieve a ride comfort-performance balance includes Koni Height-Adjustable Coilovers, KW Variant 3 Coilovers, Raceland Coilovers, and Eibach Pro-Street Coilovers.

Aftermarket Wheels

The easiest way to improve road holding, handling, braking, and turn-in precision is to plus size your wheels and tires. Plus sizing means proportionally increasing wheel diameter, increasing the width of the tire and reducing sidewall height.

There’s a tradeoff to this upgrade; extra weight can overwhelm springs and shock damping, reducing loose-surface tracking stability. However, maintaining the same tire diameter when upgrading won’t interfere with your car’s traction control systems, torque and speedometer accuracy.

Before moving forward with plus sizing, be sure to talk to an attendant at your local auto shop to know your plus sizing options. Also, when switching to non-OEM tire size, consult the Load and Inflation Tables to determine the ideal inflation pressure to maintain OE load-carrying capacity.

Performance Clutch and Flywheel

As the engine’s power output increases and your car’s performance increases, there is a lot of pressure on the clutch. To offset the stress, you’ll need a clutch with greater holding and clamping capacity. Upping the clutch will increase clamping pressure of the friction plates enabling the clutch to handle much higher torque levels.

While any high-quality clutch will take quite a bit of getting used to and may be tricky to manage in traffic, installing one will help improve the “holding” power of your factory transmission. You’ll also want to pop in a lightweight flywheel which will allow your car to accelerate faster in low gears. Prices tend to vary a great deal so shopping around will always pay off, using a car part search engine will save you hours when looking for an aftermarket performance clutch whether it be a car-specific or universal cutch.

High-Flow Catalytic Converter

High flow cats work in a similar manner to your stock unit. They reduce toxic gases and pollutants in exhaust gas – only faster and more efficiently. High flow catalytic converters have a high flow capacity that guarantees smooth exhaust flow. This noticeably increases power across RPM range delivering a boost to both torque and horsepower.

Silicone Hoses

Mostly an engine dress-up item, performance silicone radiator hoses carry fluids at much higher temperatures than standard rubber coolant hoses. This makes silicone rads an essential for modders who are building a racing car or adding a turbocharger to their engine. The other saving grace of silicone radiators is that they are long-lasting and easy to install.

You can either spend a couple of hundred bucks on the entire assortment or install them one by one as your conventional hoses fail.

Turbo Kit

Fitting a turbo kit on your ride is one of the most effective yet expensive ways of improving its performance. Turbo kits work like a forced induction system. They compress air that flows into the engine, squeezing more air into the cylinder. With more air, the engine can produce more power.

While it’s possible to build a custom turbo kit from scratch, full aftermarket kits take the guesswork out of these types of forced induction systems.

Radiator Upgrade

If you’re considering replacing your engine in the future, or if your radiator has seen better days, a new radiator will improve your car’s cooling ability under all conditions. Aluminum radiators are a good choice when looking to replace your old radiator. Unlike OEM radiators which are a mix of aluminum and plastic, aluminum rads are entirely made of aluminum. This significantly reduces the chances of your radiator leaking and cracking over time. Another upside to aluminum radiators is that they are lightweight and visually appealing.

Performance Intake Manifold

The volume of air that makes it through the combustion chamber and the distance and direction the air has to travel through it can have a great impact on engine performance. Performance intakes direct air-fuel mixture from the throttle body to the plenum which feeds the mixture to the engine’s cylinder heads. The precise distribution of the air-fuel mixture to each cylinder head ensures that the engine’s output is optimized.

Lightweight Performance Pulley

Crankshaft pulleys are the source of power for a car’s elements. They transmit torque and mechanical power to the belt units – alternator, power steering pump, air conditioner, and water pump so they can provide their own service. Replacing stock pulleys with carefully resized units slows the elements enough that their performance doesn’t suffer but just enough that more power is transmitted to the wheels – where power should be.

Most aftermarket pulleys are made of aircraft quality aluminum which makes them lightweight and durable. Its lightweight property results in less mass on the engine’s crankshaft which increases the engine’s RPM.

In the end…

There are a plethora of aftermarket car parts available to modders. Some are worth the time and effort while others are a massive waste of money. The bolt-on parts listed on this post are sure to give you the biggest bang for your buck.