What other aftermarket gadgets have you fitted?

[Keiman]

Just curious what else people have fitted in their rides that were not factory fitted?

I would not include stereo/ hi first upgrades or performance mods like turbo timers and extra gauges.

Personally I now only have rear parking sensors and a bracket that gets clipped on the steering wheel if I want to use my tablet in the car when I am not driving. All my friends also know I will not answer my mobile phone when driving even though I have Bluetooth.

 

[kamkar]

I dont have anything extra beside the dashcams, and the 7" tablet i use for a NAV unit when i once in a while need it.

I am so old now i dont see any reason to spend mony on upgrading my car performance or how it look, but if i had a lot more surplus mony than i do not have now i might do it.
But it would have to be a massive ammount of surplus mony, and they would first be spent on another ride than the small suzuki i have now, or just a nice ride to break out in the summer time.

Then again for me or i guess anyone to have 2 cars, you will have to be a house owner, and sadly that and more or less anything else would require for me to winn big in the lottery.

Allso the fact that i live in a get 1 car pay for 3 country, make the issue of having a car at all pretty hard, and not forgetting me beeing single witch have just been proven is a lot more expensive here than living with some one.

To me the car is just a means to not having to walk or cycle from A to B, or not share in public transportation witch at large is a faliure as soon as you get outside any major city.

 

[albertson]

This is not a gadget to add, but often overlooked improvement. If there is a hobby level driver training class, that can be a great improvement to enjoying your normal driving. Some sports car clubs also offer similar driving school class. Not that you need to drive fast or be aggressive. just teaches you how to judge your cars behavior and hopefully safely correct for hazards others may cause. If you can avoid a crash, that has to count at least as valuable as having dash cam evidence of a crash you were victim of. There is a driver school near my town that the new police are required to attend. It is also open to the public (for a fee). It teaches how to think about signs of hazard, and then skills for recover from a slide, or change lanes quickly without losing control, etc. First there is class room training. Then a coach rides as passenger with you as they have you practice the training on a private track.

If the headlights are weak, then looking for some well designed replacement can be very helpful to you and the dashcam. I found LED replacement headlights that were much better at focusing the light and seems to about double the lumins of the stock units. Elsewhere in the forum comments about a strong horn can be helpful to alert someone.

If Kamkar finds himself in my area some day, I would enjoy going on a local tour with him for some automotive fun. I am sure he is already a very good driver, just needs the opportunity to enjoy it like the quads.

 

[petepete]

A pain to fit, but the diesel webasto heater travels from car purchase to car purchase with me, as come frozen winter mornings there is nothing finer than entering a hot warm toasty defrosted car !

 

[kamkar]

I have allways seen the good sense in having a webasto heater in the winter time, but sadly i never got around to fitting one in any of my diesel 4x4 trucks.

For sure there have never been much fun in any of the cars i have owned myself, and back when i was a bigger petrolhead i dident have the mony for it, or i used the mony on other stuff witch is just as bad as a car.

We have a saying here, owning a car is like a hole in the ground, you can keep pouring mony into it and it never fill up.

Okay my mitsubishi L200 in RWD in the winter was pretty good fun, drifting at 15 km/h, and at time scaring ppl when they saw a "huge" 4x4 comming towards them sideways.

If i win a lot of mony in the lottery i will offcourse go overbord in cars 😀 the mony have to be spent before i die as i have no one to pick up the left overs.
And as we allso say here " there is no pockets in the final pair of pants"

 

[Keiman]

Just been playing with some bits from another of my hobbies and thinking there is no way I can fit any of it in the car. Too much electronics under the dash to be zapped by a minimum of 50W NBFM signal.https://www.ebay.com/itm/170544753631
I know there should be no spurious emissions from Transceiver or co-axial cable but still think if I still had an older style car it would be better with no airbags, under-dash ecu's, electronic dashboard.

 

[melensdad]

Audi A6L (TDI) has aftermarket tinted windows, APR Tuning stage 1+ boost, painted wheels.
VW Jetta (TDI) was rebuilt as a street legal TDI Cup race car
VW Touareg only has an aftermarket Bluetooth module
1967 Jeepster is bone stock except for the 'ArrruuGA' horn

 

[albertson]

Now that it is winter, it is dark going to work and returning home. To help improve my safety I add a set of Christmas lights to my rear window to celebrate the Christmas season for 4 months (Nov - Feb) but also to make it easier for cars following me to see my car in the dark. These are LED lights intended for a Christmas tree, but I have mounted them on a spare window trim ring that I can set just inside my rear window. The lights are connected to my tail light wires. Regular tail, turn, and 3rd brake light circuits, so these also act as turn & stop signals, etc. My stock tail lights are the original size, which is rather small by today's standard.

 

[kamkar]

Back in the 90ties my car had extra brake light fited, and since i doubled up on the number of lights ppl where not in doubt when i was stopping my Opel.

The cops where allso not happy about my brake light, but they never asked me to take them out of the car.

As long as you dont go overbord with the car like some ppl do with the house during x-mas i see no problem 😀

 

[rudolf diesel]

I suppose that depends on what one means by "gadgets".

CB radio and linear amplifier.
LED strip lights in bed cap.
Rear window wiper with a pantograph arm on the truck cap rear door.
Truck cap rear door window defroster grid.
rear camera and 7" touchscreen with a car computer.

Then there's things like Acura TSX HID retrofits, led lighting, wiper shakers, heated wiper washer nozzles, heated power dodge towing mirrors, custom lower console, etc, etc....

Pretty much everything else is handled by my iphone, which goes into the stock radio through and adapter that allows the radio (and steering wheel buttons) to control it.