Tuesday, December 21, 2010

How to style and modify your car

There are many different car styling modifications that you can make to a car. They are generally used to make it go faster, look better or both. This article is concerned with ideas that could make your car look better. A lot of external car styling modifications try to make the outside of the car look smoother. The smoother lines then appeal to our sense of order and purity. To make the lines of your car more even, you may need to remove or cover up some of the design features of the original car.

A number of cars have grooves pressed into the metal panels of the body especially on the belt or waist line of the car. These are a hang over from when smaller metal panels had to be joined together in order to make a larger body panel. The join called a swage line was then hidden by creating the groove effect along the side of the car. These days door panels can be made using one piece of metal, and the swage line is really redundant. Despite this, it has become a recognised styling form in car design. Just take a look at all the cars that have them as you drive down the road! These swage lines may also be on the bonnet and boot as well. Swage lines disrupt the smooth lines of the car and as a result many people try to get rid of them. The usual way is to fill them in and then respray the panels. The filling can be done using standard car body filler.

Doors are then opened by using an electronic key fob. These are fitted to modern cars anyway. The only problem arises if the battery goes flat and the electronic key fob fails to work. For this reason the tailgate lock is often left so that the vehicle can be entered if problems occur. Sometimes the tailgate has the lock removed and the other locks are left as standard. This is all personal choice and depends on the effect you want to achieve. The handles can also be removed and the holes filled and smoothed. In this case solenoids have to be fitted so that the doors are pushed open, as well as being unlocked, when the electronic key fob is activated.