Minor fixes that made a big difference

[Bottom_Feeder]

I spent a few minutes adjusting most of the slack out of the throttle cables on my wife's '02 Corolla. I got tired of the way it lagged between pressing the pedal and the engine actually responding. Now it feels perfect, way more connected to my foot. Totally worth it.

What's yours?

 

[Bgallagher]

LIM and/or headgasket in the 3.1/3.4/3.8. Those engines are nails once you fixed that flaw. Guess that wouldn't be considered minor lol.


Minor fix for me would be adding PSI to my tires. My ride and MPGs are much better after something as simple as that

 

[bdcardinal]

Swapped out the intake pipe inbetween the MAF and the throttle body on my 2014 Mustang with one from Airaid. Got rid of a huge, ugly resonance chamber and it eliminated the engine sound synthesizer pipe. Gave me room under the hood to divorce the clutch fluid reservoir from the brake master cylinder reservoir.

 

[d00df00d]

Had a set of Fallen FK452s on my old E36 M3. They were okay when new, but at half tread depth they made the car intolerable to drive. That's not an exaggeration. It was so loud and rough that I couldn't stand it for more than 30 minutes. One set of Contis later, the car was back to being awesome.


Got another one. My brother installed a tall shifter in his Integra. It's basically a radical short-shift kit with a really long lever, so that the knob comes up to the height of the steering wheel. That car has a LOT of other mods, but I still think that shifter did more than any other single mod to make the car more fun to drive. Now I really want one for my car!

 

[CharlieBauer]

Great topic for a thread OP!

Back when I knew even less about cars then I do now, we moved house and my wife began to short trip her car and used non branded gas a lot.

After a year or maybe more of this, I drove the car on the freeway. Above 60 it got more and more noisy, started shaking and would not go above 80.

Since she took it to the dealer regularly for oil change specials and multi point inspections, I was surprised and initially thought the car had just gotten "old" and we should trade it in for something newer.

Started thinking a bit more and after some research, I decided to clean the throttle body and run a PEA cleaner. I wasn't entirely sure this was the issue, but thought it would be a low cost first step before taking it to someone who would either claim it was normal or that they couldn't replicate the issue.

Turned out these two things made a dramatic difference. I ran a second bottle of PEA cleaner which improved things a little more but most of the improvement had already happened.

 

[sleddriver]

Replacing rotted vacuum hoses & elbows with silicone.

 

[surfstar]

Various VCDS/VagCom/OBDeleven programming on my Sportwagen - get "options" of the higher priced models for a $60 BT dongle and app.

Adding washers and longer bolts to front seats - puts the seat angle where it should be so my thighs are supported. $10 for "new" seats

 

[Pontual]

Cleaning the intersection coils and sparkplug tips, my NGK LFR5Bs have the issue with rust on caps at tip. NGKs aren't that quality plugs anymore. My Iridums on my ninja are also ngk and also got a lot of corrosion on the nut.

 

[Kestas]

My 85 Omni needed the idle stop sensor cleaned every so often to remove the tarnish on the open brass contacts. It made a big difference in idling.

 

[barkingspider]

A real good detail cleaning on my beater. For about 6 hours, I washed and NuFinished the exterior, removed the interior panels and carpet, cleaned the [censored] out of the panels, shampoo the carpets and seats, cleaned the interior glass, tightened everything that I found was loose, and put everything back. Now the inside is nice, my wife don't mind sitting in it, clean and smells good. Well worth a day of manual labor

 

[Nick1994]

I had a 1996 Chevy Silverado, I put a junkyard tailgate on it (previous one stolen) and it needed new tailgate rod clips to the handle. I tried the ones in a multipack at the auto parts store, they didn't fit right and broke. For several years every single time I had to put the tailgate down, I used a pair of pliers and reached inside the tailgate and pulled each rod to release the latches. Total pain in the you-know-what.

Then when I was selling it, I went to the dealer, spent $3 on 2 new clips, spent 2 minutes putting them on, and it worked perfectly. #*$'!

 

[CBR.worm]

Replacing hard tires and replacing strut mounts. Both made huge differences and fixed issues that I shouldn't have lived with for as long as I did.

 

[cjcride]

Changed a cabin air filter on the used Corolla. It was dirty. The filter was probably original and around 7 years old. I could have laid it in the sun and watered it and stuff would have grown for sure.

 

[01rangerxl]

This past weekend I cleaned out the cowl vent area on my 1994 Ranger. It had a pretty good accumulation of pine needles and mud after 22 years. I removed the access plates on the firewall and cleaned everything out real well, then used a Wynn's vent cleaning/odor remover kit on it (1st part sprayed through cowl vent area, 2nd part is an interior fogger while on recirc). Before, it had an occasional funky odor when set to vent, especially after rain, and now all of that is gone. Also, while I was at it, I replaced a wiper motor bolt that has been missing since I got the truck. That tightened up the wiper movement a lot.

 

[artificialist]

Sometimes you can't know a PCV valve has failed until you finally replace it. I lost track of how many times this has happened to a car I was working on.

 

[Robenstein]

Putting radials on an old car that had bias ply and keeping your tires properly inflated.

 

[Duffyjr]

Clean MAF and IAC, now car starts better after its warmed up.

 

[eljefino]

Adjusting TV cables to transmissions, specifically, tightening them a tad. They stretch over time and upshift early.

Throttle body cleanings.

Cleaning the inside windscreen and all glass.

Pulling apart disc brakes and lubing all the sliding points, and making sure the pads still slide free. Banging out drum brakes and putting a click on the adjuster to make sure things aren't frozen up in there.

Cleaning wiper blades, and if necessary tweaking their arms to realign them if they chatter in one direction. Then pulling said arms to spray them matte black again; the black roasts in the sun and gets chipped by the slipstream.

Yanking inward on door window frames so there's more tension on the weatherstripping. Keeps whistles down.

 

[Colt45ws]

Replacing the power steering fluid and cleaning the screen in the bottom of the reservoir which brought my power steering back to life. It was strong-arm steering before I did that.

 

[Ducked]

Cutting off the fan blade opposite the missing one, on a 4-bladed radiator fan.

2 minute job.

Except I never "got around to it".

After another year or so of unbalanced load, the bearings in the water pump failed, the impeller shaft smashed through the side of the water pump housing, and the liberated (still three bladed, though rapidly shortening) fan made a big hole in the radiator.

Could have been worse. Girlfriend was driving it at the time but managed to limp the now coolant-free car off the motorway without destroying the engine.

She was an art student and made a drawing of the situation under the bonnet, for response planning purposes. Still have that.