Cheap(ish) or free mods to a saxo vtr?

[mprice550]

Hi everyone. I've just bought a 2001 Saxo VTR as my first car, it's completely standard at the moment, but but was wondering if there's any cheap engine, interior or visual mods I can do to the car to make it a bit quicker etc? I heard about fitting a furio/quiksilver 'box. Is this possible, and will it make any difference?

Thanks :y:

[stevie_m]

I'd sort out the brakes before I start thinking engine mods

[LVC]

Get some VTS and 16v badges stuck on - will add at least 30bhp guaranteed ;)

Doesn't need Brake mods - it's a VTR with discs all round - he won't get anywhere near enough power out of it to worry about upgrading the brakes.

[stevie_m]

Make sure your rear beam isn't fucked or you can wave goodbye to aa nice little wedge of cash.

[mprice550]

I'm thinking of getting 306 HDI/Berlingo/206 GTI brakes fitted, because these will fit under the standard 14" wheels i think?

[vtcarl]

I would start with giving it a good service. then get a panel filter for the airbox. look at some decent tyres for better grip. upreate brake pads or uprate the front discs and caliper to a 206 gti set up (266mm disc). look at suspension new bushes (either standard or poly). if funds stretch enough look into lowering. then in time move on to exhaust and engine.

[stevo67]

Dewiper.

[griff_106]

I'm thinking of getting 306 HDI/Berlingo/206 GTI brakes fitted, because these will fit under the standard 14" wheels i think?

Those brakes (266mm) will just fit under 14" wheels so you'll be fine there mate. Quick picture of clearance I have:

http://imageshack.us/a/img402/5130/20120721102551.jpg

If you haven't already, I'd recommend thinking about fitting a quickshift as well... I've tried a mates and it tightens up the throw beautifully.

Apart from lowering the suspension, I think everything else I can think of has been mentioned lol. For the price, the Apex kit is very good value :y:

There's always tidying up the inevitable niggles as well... rubbing the wiper arms down and giving them a fresh coat of paint, aero wipers, de-wipering the rear as mentioned above, fresh number plates etc. are all reasonably cheap mods that will make the car alot cleaner as well :)

[mprice550]

Cheers :) I'm not sure whether to bother lowering it to be honest. I live in the middle of nowhere and the potholes are bad, and if I lower it to much, it'll ground anyway! Lol. I'll look into the things you mentioned. I think instead of lowering it, I'll put strut braces on and bushes, maybe a GTi arb and some decent tyres. :)

[Cam]

Its the 1.1 or vts box you not the 1.4

[Quick]

Strip it - less weight - better power to weight ratio!

[mprice550]

How much power will 1.1 internals hold up too? Will the vts make the acceleration any quicker? I would strip it, but like the sound of no rattles and banging! Lol.

[mprice550]

I'll look into a quick shift. Does it actually make huge difference? :)

[smiith]

Burn it, its free, and you will feel better

[Prickle]

i dont know really. Give the shell a proper check over incase you put good money to a shitter.

[mprice550]

I have a friends dad who owns a garage, taking it there to wax the whole underneath of the car for £20 so will check it out then :)

[jeffchiz]

How much power will 1.1 internals hold up too? Will the vts make the acceleration any quicker? I would strip it, but like the sound of no rattles and banging! Lol.

the vts and 1.1 box are very similar, only issue with the 1.1 box is the smaller diff, so just dont do too many wheel spins lol a 1.1/vts box makes a big difference on a vtr

[mprice550]

So a vts box would be more logical then? Lol, how much better would the acceleration be?

[ns9900]

i was under th impression that the 1.1 has shorter gear ratios so better acceleration. might want a track goer to make sure of this

also, i took my aerial out, hate that thing! strut brace and air filters are cheap and easy mods, both of which im selling! pmed ya

[blackie_2k5]

Burn it

[Bedford126]

I have a friends dad who owns a garage, taking it there to wax the whole underneath of the car for £20 so will check it out then :)

LMFAO!!!!!

£20 to waxoyl the under side of your car and he is your mate's dad lol Your mate has a shit dad..

[DAMSK11]

Scrap it. You gain money from that.

or you could paint some sik racing stripes on it. POWWWAAAR Y0

[kmak577]

get the injectors ultrasonically cleaned, gets the stray pattern back to how it should be, so if its way out it should improve performance and economy.

But as said give it a really anal service. That'll do it the world of good.

[mprice550]

Meh. I don't mind paying more tbf, saves me having to do it. And I know he does a good job too. So in short, there's isn't many things you can do to a vtr to make the performance better? What can you do to make it look better then?

[D4NNY-801]

Colour code everything. Grill, headlights, rear lights if black, dash trims, wheels etc. . .

[jeffchiz]

LMFAO!!!!!

£20 to waxoyl the under side of your car and he is your mate's dad lol Your mate has a shit dad..

how much does it usually cost?

[Carl-h]

I'd happily pay £20 to have a car wax oiled. The tin is nearly that much and it's a fucking horrible shitty messy job. My disco will be going to a place to be treated and it'll cost me over £300 in the summer. They do treat inside every single nook and cranny with a compressor though.

Only thing you can do for free is take stuff out that you don't need. Strip everything but the drivers seat is free and may help you get to 60 0.1 seconds faster. Naa not sure how much difference it makes as I've always kept my interior as I can't stand road noise.

[mprice550]

Might do that then :y: not sure what colour to paint the wheels, calipers etc. Any ideas? The car is silver

[jeffchiz]

id stick to a grey/antractie or maybe white on a silver car not many other colours go well with it, but grey would look the best imo

[Aly]

Best cheap mods to do:

1.1 Box I got a mint one for £40 if you can fit it yourself it's a cheap mod
K&N panel filter
decat
exhaust system.

Should go well like that

[mprice550]

Yeah, I was thinking anthracite would look good. Might paint wheels, calipers and and colour code other bits of the car in that colour :) is a 1.1 box that good then? Because everyone keeps saying vts or 1.1,not sure which to get! Lol. :)

[Forbes_VTR]

106 gti leather seats and door cards.
There hard to come by a decent set cheaply
I payed £120 for a set of minteres but I got a bargain.
They add a lot of class to the car. No end of people comment on them(mostly girls now I think about it)
Help your car look good and pull lasses =p

[chimnehp0ts]

what about some camber?

http://sphotos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/483845_10151548013102177_1553917777_n.jpg

or rat look?

http://sphotos-c.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/577864_10151529530477177_1388339842_n.jpg

oooor

http://sphotos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/539372_10151487787187177_850403500_n.jpg

[mprice550]

Might keep an eye out for some GTi door cards and seats, but most of the time I'm all dirty/oily, so don't want to ruin them! Lol.

Haha. Camber'd y0. Might go for rat look. Looks awesome! :y:

[jeffchiz]

lol that pic was on the 'id rather have aids than drive a saxo' fb page

i have gti front leathers for sale £50 collected

and as said the 1.1 and vts boxes are VERY similar its jsut the diff that is the main difference, ideally you want a vts box but you can get 1.1 boxes cheaper just have to have a bit more mechanical sympathy with them

[stevie_m]

That's what happened to my gold one but on the passenger side

[mprice550]

Cheers :) I don't think I'll bother with the seats, yet anyway. Because there will be seat covers on them anyway. I'll keep an eye out for a vts box. How much better acceleration will a standard vtr be with a vts box on it?

[Gandi699]

xsi box just to throw a spanner in the works haha

[mprice550]

Lol, a vts box would be cheaper though. So will probably go for one of them :)

[Stissy]

depends how cheap you mean by 'cheap'.

- de-wiper the rear. a bung should be a couple of quid, if that, and it improves the look of the rear loads.
- paint the calipers. a can of hammerite direct to rust is about 8 pound. its easy enough to do yourself too and makes the brakes look fresh.
- paint the dash details. the centre of the dash and the vents pop out dead easy, you could spray them up? the standard VTR dash is grey if i remember right? i took mine out and re-did it black. Some matte spray paint is about a fiver.
- paint the grille. most grilles fade on the VTRs so you could pop that off and give it a fresh spray of paint, you could do the Citroen chevrons a different colour too if you had a colour theme you were going for. again some spray paint is about a fiver
- T.Cut the rear badges. If your car is silver it might look good with some black rear badges, you can put some T.Cut on a bit of cloth and rub the rear badges, that'll take the silver paint off and they'll be black all over. Its suprising how much better the back looks with clean badges. T.Cut is about a fiver, make sure you get the maximum grit.
- new plates. some new plates are about thirty quid. instantly make the car look better. or get some road legal pressed plates?
- Air filter. Depending on if you want performance, or you're just doing it for the noise, then you can get a panel filter or an open cone filter for about twenty quid. that'll give the car a bit of a grunt and it'll sound nicer.
- Splitter. It used to be all the rage to get a Laguna splitter on the front of a saxo, you can pick those up for about fifteen pound, (maybe cheaper if you got it from scrap yard) Then just give it a good clean and use some plastic polish or back to black to bring it up and fit it with some araldite or tiger seal.

If you have a bit more money then:
- Audio. Subs/amps etc are pretty cheap now, especially if they're second hand. you could get yourself a decent sub set up for under fifty pound. you could probably even do it for thirty. Once you've made 100 posts get yourself into the 'I.C.E for sale' section and i'm pretty sure you'd be able to pick something up.
- Service. It might seem like a waste of time but a proper service, with some engine flush/injector cleaner, some decent oil (i think i used Castrol GTX) and some new sparks (i used NGK-Rs) will make your car run smoother and feel better. It'll probably increase the performance a little too. This should cost around forty quid? and if you know your way around a car you could do it all yourself.
- Wheels. If you can afford it, then get some new wheels for your car, if you pick the right wheels it can make your car look 100x better straight away. If you can't afford some new wheels, then spray yours up? I assume you've got the standard 'R plugholes but you could spray them up anthracite or something just for the time being. you'll need about 4 cans of spray paint and 4 cans of lacquer. That should cost about thirty/forty quid.
- Lowering can't really be done on a budget. but you can pick up a set of springs for about fourty/fifty pound, then do the lowering part yourself? even a cheeky 20mm makes the car look 1000x better and the stiffer suspension makes it handle better too.

Apart from that, just keep your eyes out for anything being sold cheap(ish) and get a bargain. you'll be able to pick up loads of more serious modifications for under a couple of hundred so just keep your eyes our for exhausts, manifolds, better induction kits, wheels etc on the 'for sale' section or on eBay.

:)

[Gandi699]

Dont fit a furio box, its as bad as a diesel box

[hellonpluto]

i got extra 20bhp after i fitted this badboy:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2AyRduoTmVM/UQItEPNHmgI/AAAAAAAAFPA/brKSvYfsYTk/s640/resistorratings_03.jpg

[rinseUK]

Thats almost VTS power with that badboy!!

Maybe some hanging dice and a nodding man on the dash!

[ns9900]

Bitch in the :back, side and round your neck , won't matter what power you're running , coz you got a pussy wagon

[mprice550]

I've decided I'm going to paint bits of the car in anthracite grey. Also I think I'm going to carbon wrap bits of the car too, inside and out. What is there inside I can carbon wrap? :y:

[Stissy]

I've decided I'm going to paint bits of the car in anthracite grey. Also I think I'm going to carbon wrap bits of the car too, inside and out. What is there inside I can carbon wrap? :y:

did you not read my post man?
go back and replace where i wrote "paint" with "wrap".
aside from: the calipers

[Brettles1986]

My 2 pence:

It's your first car so leave engine mods out of the question until you have driven it for a good few months so as you get used to the current power and when the time comes that you feel you want (and can afford) more power then just get a VTS.

As for making it look good, just some subtle lowering (I always find that 50mm is spot on) and maybe a change of wheel colour is enough to make it look smart.

You can also tcut the rear badges and gloss the bumper and side strips so they stay a shiny black.

Other than that I would leave it as it is.

[mprice550]

Thanks :) sorry - I missed your post. Lol, there's some good stuff in there which I'll try and do/get. I don't want to lower it to much, because I live down the bottom of a bumpy/gravel lane, which if it was to low, I'd ground on, and the roads round here are bad to! What other handing mods could I do apart from lowering it? Strut brace, bushes. Etc? Also ate there any dampers/springs about that don't lower the car much/if any, that are stiffer than standard? :y:

[Brettles1986]

Thanks :) sorry - I missed your post. Lol, there's some good stuff in there which I'll try and do/get. I don't want to lower it to much, because I live down the bottom of a bumpy/gravel lane, which if it was to low, I'd ground on, and the roads round here are bad to! What other handing mods could I do apart from lowering it? Strut brace, bushes. Etc? Also ate there any dampers/springs about that don't lower the car much/if any, that are stiffer than standard? :y:

Everyone raves about Bilstien B8's but I have never had any experience with them, as for handling mods you could try a bottom strut brace but that will cause further ground clearance issues.

Tyres and brakes are also something worth looking at if you want to improve the overall handling of the car.

[mprice550]

okay. cheers mate :) i'll just get some decent tyres, 306 hdi brakes and maybe upper and lower strut braces :y:

[Stissy]

Thanks :) sorry - I missed your post. Lol, there's some good stuff in there which I'll try and do/get. I don't want to lower it to much, because I live down the bottom of a bumpy/gravel lane, which if it was to low, I'd ground on, and the roads round here are bad to! What other handing mods could I do apart from lowering it? Strut brace, bushes. Etc? Also ate there any dampers/springs about that don't lower the car much/if any, that are stiffer than standard? :y:

Saxos have pretty good clearance. you could probably lower it 30/40mm and be happy all day. Mine was down 80mm and i lived in a 'semi-rural' village. It never beached or anything. There was one speed bump which used to scrape the exhaust. But that was because i had a huge powerflow backbox which dropped about 3" lower than the rest of the car.

just take it steady. you'd be suprised at what you can get away with mate.