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The Worst Modifications Found On Used Cars According To Reddit

Reddit is a mountain of information when you’re looking to buy, maintain, or modify a car. But, unfortunately, there are people out there that don’t really know what they’re doing when it comes to modifying cars, and this can often lead to really poor decisions being made. Eventually, these issues are transferred onto the next owner when the car’s finally sold. 

It’s impossible to check literally everything in a car when you’re buying it, especially if it’s not through a dealer, so as these Reddit users found out, there may well be something lurking under the cover as soon as you start to dig in yourself. 

Missing Engine Management Light

“My Land Rover had the check engine LED removed from the gauge cluster. I had to find another yellow LED on the cluster that wasn’t used by my vehicle, de-solder it, then solder it back on to the board where the check engine LED used to reside. I went with the LED that’s used for the diesel glow plug indicator, since mine is a V8.”

eBay And Plastidip Makes For A Bad MR2…

“Bought my sw20 mr2 turbo for cheap in 2015 cause it had a blown motor, but in tearing it apart to swap another gen2 3sgte I found and removed the summer of the following:

  1. 18in “AutoZone/2001) style rims that had to go asap. I bought the car thinking I was just going to scrap them but luckily someone bought them off me on cl. Big rims look dumb on such a small car. On top of that, it had the thinnest fucking tires to fit in the wells (like 215/30 or something like that).

  2. S****y eBay lowering springs. Bought it knowing it had eibach springs and poly mounts. When I took it apart, only the fronts were eibach, the rears were something shitty (but also red??). Cars now on bc coilovers and a Wilhelm suspension geometry kit.

  3. An ebay exhaust that I unfortunately still have. It sounds ok when driving normally but f*****g drones like crazy on the highway.

  4. The worst part was that the car was plastidipped black and was IMPOSSIBLE to rip off due to come places having a lighter coat than others. F*****g still find plastidip here and there from time to time.

Bonus: just the sheer amount of s**t eBay filters and tubing that the car had prior to me changing it. It’s a good thing it was a steal because the motor was blown and I went into it knowing I was going to change it. I couldn’t imagine someone buying it while working and finding all this s**t later.”

Permanent Vin Diesel

“I bought a GSXR1000 from a guy whose favorite movie was Triple X. He proudly told me this while showing me the xXx stickers on the fairing and tailpiece, before moving on to the piece de resistance, a huge”GixXxer” on each side of the lower fairing. He was a ~50 year old dude with a family and a white collar job by the way, and not only was his favorite movie about Vin Deisel jumping dirt bikes over explosions and tail whipping baddies in the face, he loved it so much that he’d had stickers custom made for his bike with the logo in them.

The price was right and the bike was in decent condition otherwise, so I bought it thinking I’d just peel the stickers off as soon as I got home and hide the box of spare ones he gave me somewhere no one would ever find them. That was fine for the smaller xXx’s on the top fairing and tailpiece, but when I got to the huge GixXxer’s I found to my horror that they’d been clear coated over. The madman must’ve asked for them to be added when he ordered the fairings. I was so desperate to get rid of them I ended up peeling them off anyway and trying to redo the clear coat on the bottom fairing in the middle of winter in my unheated garage with rattle cans, which obviously turned out cloudy and just generally terrible. But at least it didn’t have GixXxer on it any more.”

Fog Lights And Bad Wiring

“On my car the past owner wired up after market fog lights and then replaced them again. Rather than reuse all the old wiring from the first system, they ran another set of wires to a new switch and kept all the old remnants of wiring and switch intact leaving me a rats nest of identical wires to detangle.

This is overlooking the fact that while my vehicle didn’t come with fog lights from factory, the wiring harness does have the wiring to add it because it was a dealer installed option. The past owner also caulked the area of the firewall that the wires came through (its suppose to just be a grommet). So now I can’t do anything with the wiring harness if I needed to because its been sealed in place.”

Forget The Wipers

 
“2002 mustang GT. Previous owner removed windshield wiper arms for weight reduction, but left the much heavier rear seatbelts in despite the rear seat being removed…. I bought it from Seattle.”
 

Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Fuel

“Any of the 2 cars I helped friends fix up where the previous owners opted to bypass the fuel sending unit rather than replace it. One was a 1991 Chevy Cavalier coupe and the other was a 1996 Dodge Ram B2500 conversion van. The fuel tanks for both only took about 20 minutes of work to drop each. That shit is the pure essence of hackery.”

How Low is Too Low?

“Bought a Miata NA that was lowered on eBay coilovers so far that the driveshafts were wearing grooves into the lower spring perch…”

eBay Tints Can Ruin Anything

“On an otherwise mint condition Ram SRT-10 6-speed manual, the idiot put eBay tinted tail lights and headlights, plus stickers on the back window like Dale Earnhardt RIP garbage. Made a collector classic look like any bro-truck at the mall.

I put back the stock lights, removed the stickers, had it detailed, and sold it for 45% more than I paid.”

 

Do you have any horror stories? Let us know in the comments!

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