COLD AIR INTAKE
For those of you who are just joining us today you're in luck. Pick up any magazine on the newsstand and what will you usually see? Dozens of cold air intakes for sale at a decent price. This wasn't always the case, though. From the dawn of time up until '95, all one could do was slap on a K&N www.knairfilters.comair filter (or drop-in replacement) attached to their stock rubber intake hose and call it a day.
Sai Akimoto www.racingsportsakimoto.com came up with a brilliant alternative, crafting the first cold air intake system, a piece of aluminum piping that, when matched to a filter design using a funnel ram, could produce more horsepower and torque. This type of intake would be redesigned many times over and today companies like Fujita Air www.f5fujita.com and AEM www.aempower.com have developed improved systems that keep out water without sacrificing power.
CUSTOM WHEEL OFFSETS
There's nothing worse than going online or walking into your local shop, eyeing a set of wheels you know will look fresh on your whatever-it-is-that-you-drive and being told that it won't fit right or clear without rubbing. Blame it on lack of offset or the engineers who designed your car for equipping it with a 5x100 bolt pattern instead of the 4x100, but either way it screams SOL for you. All is not lost, however, because while not every wheel is going to be at your disposal that doesn't mean you don't have options. Early on, HRE www.hrewheels.com started to produce wheels that could be had in any size, bolt pattern or offset-and great-looking stuff, but not cheap. Supreme wheel supplier Rays Engineering www.mackinindustries.com does do a custom Volk for limited applications, like if you're a D1 driver or have money to burn, but getting anything rare from these guys is like picking up a pair of sought-after Dunk SBs. But the money conscious consumer can thank J-Line www.jlinewheels.com for finally releasing candy coated, deep dished-basically any way you can customize a wheel-wheels. If you can think it up, they can get it to you.
INTERCOOLER NITROUS SPRAY
When drag racing exploded during the mid '90s, racers were always looking for that extra edge and sometimes that came in the form of a little squeeze. But for those who boldly claimed "no nitrous," meaning literally no use of NO2 as a means of forced induction, they had to resort to alternative methods, i.e., forcing your buddy to dash in front of said staged vehicle and douse the front mount with a hit of nitrous. Now as you may or may not know, spraying nitrous oxide onto an intercooler does a very important job: it seriously drops your air intake temperatures, and turbo/supercharged engines love as much cold air as they can get. Why? For more power, of course. But you can't always have someone running out in front of a race car. This is why nitrous companies like Nitrous Express www.nitrousexpress.com have produced nitrous spray bars (NX offers the N-tercooler), which gives the driver control of when, how often and how much nitrous should be sprayed onto the intercooler. This product not only comes in handy for drag racing, but road racing and drifting as well.