10 Mods That'll Turn Any Car Into A Drag Strip Monster

1. Find something light with a bulletproof engine

Any car can be made into a drag monster with enough time and money, but for most of us, picking the right car to begin with can make all the difference. You want a lightweight car with a bulletproof engine; you’re going to want to strip as much weight as possible, so starting low is ideal, while getting an engine that probably won’t go bang will help you in the long run.

Good examples include Fox-body Mustangs if you’re in America, or a Honda CRX or Civic if you don’t mind going front-wheel drive as they’re both very light.

2. Strip your engine back and make it good as new

Since you’ll probably be putting big power through an older engine, it’d make sense to strip it back and make sure everything’s up to scratch. While you’ve got it in pieces, replace parts like the piston rings, engine bearings and oil seals to ensure no pesky leaks ruin your fun.

3. Get aftermarket performance parts

On the subject of uprating your engine, for big-power builds you’re going to need to go to the aftermarket. You could fit aftermarket cams, cylinder heads, and high compression pistons to improve both power and reliability. You could even go so far as to rebore the engine for more displacement.

4. Obvious mods are obvious for a reason

Any part-time petrolhead will tell you that fitting an air intake and a bigger exhaust will help your engine breath better, and therefore result in power gains. Admittedly, gains can be relatively small, but in this business every little helps, and these mods are obvious for a reason. They can be a cheap route to a small power hike when done properly.

5. Go forced, or go home

Now your engine’s nice and solid, it’s time to force even more power from the block. Chucking a turbocharger or supercharger under the bonnet will provide serious gains, however you need to think about how you want that power delivered. Superchargers are particularly popular with drag racers as they provide a more consistent boost across the power band; when your race will fit inside an Instagram video you don’t want to be wasting valuables tenths waiting for the turbo to spool.

6. Squirt a little nitrous

Fast and Furious might not be the first place to find legitimate tuning advice, however the guys’ love of nitrous is well founded. This stuff cools the air entering the engine, making it denser, which provides a greater amount of oxygen for combustion. Just be careful with it, you don’t want to blow the welds on your intake…

7. Get some Hoosiers, bro

Street tyres just ain’t gonna cut it if you want epic grip off the line. Get some drag radials, which will help ensure all that power goes into the ground rather than into big, smokey burnouts. Hoosier is the best known drag tyre manufacturer, but if you want to boycott the brand due to their aneurism-inducing website, I wouldn’t blame you. Hit Google for a wide variety of drag radials for different budgets.

8. Fit a 'Hop Not' kit to reduce wheel hop

A problem faced by many drag racers is ‘wheel hop’, which is essentially the wheel moving about under hard acceleration. Imagine the forces a wheel is subjected to when you give it full beans, and it’s easy to understand how a wheel can move about. Fitting a rigid suspension can hold the wheel in place and ensure the contact patch is as large as possible when you plant your foot.

9. Get rid of power leechers

When your ultimate goal is accelerating as hard as possible, you don’t want anything unnecessarily dragging power away from your right boot. Good examples of this include power steering and air conditioning. Both of these will draw power from the engine and add weight without any real benefits to your top speed goal. Remove them.

10. Spend good money on a roll cage

If there’s one thing you should spend good money on, it’s safety equipment. Get yourself a decent, lightweight roll cage, because when you’re full throttle in top gear and something goes wrong, it could end up being the only thing between you and an early grave. You don’t want to find out how (un)safe the body of a 20-year-old muscle car is while upside down at 120mph.