Need Help on build ideas!!

[Halon]

First and foremost you need to realise that you have a 12 year old car on your hands. Before you do any mods, do maintenance. The better shape your car is in before you start modding, the better shape you'll be in during and after modding.

A small list of some maintenance items to consider:
- Check and/or replace all fluids (i.e. oil, coolant, driveline, etc)
- Compression Test
- Base Timing
- Spark Plugs (NGK) and Wires (OEM)
- Filters (air, fuel)
- Belts (Timing)
- Brakes
- Leaks (both liquid and air)
- Ball Joints
- DS Carrier Bearings
- Allignment
- Anything else that seems out of the norm.


Keep in mind at the same time, when doing this maintenance you may be able to kill 2 birds with 1 stone sometimes. If you air filter is nasty, rather than picking up a new stock one, you could consider a new intake. It pays to look ahead a little bit when doing the maintenance as well to minnimize wasted money on parts.

As for your 400hp goals, I wouldn't jump to that goal so quickly. Not saying it's a bad goal, but don't aim for that overnight. Plan out your path, and do it right, as few shortcuts as possible. No one here is going to be able to spoon feed you exactly what to do. You have to take it in steps that work for you and you wallet. You need to do some of the research to figure it out for yourself, and we will gladly help you but you can't come in without doing any research of your own and expect us to just say "here ya go".

Once you are ready for modding, my advise to you would be not to just jump right into buying power mods, but rather get your car prepared for power mods (this also ties back into the maintenance thing). What I mean here though is get your gauges that you will need for monitoring(boost gauge), get a tuning mechanism (dsmlink), make sure you have a clutch that will hold power, make sure your fuel system will support your goals, prepare the car as much as you can for when you start adding power mods.


Now that may sound boring, expensive, and time consuming. But most folks having done this for awhile would more than likely recommend a similar approach. It's (in my eyes) the "right" way to do it.


Or if you don't give a crap about how the car runs, drives, idles, etc. and all you care about are power numbers and how much cool stuff you have, well then just go get a bigger turbo, intercooler, more fuel, knobby AFC for fuel control and crank the boost up and let it buck til it blows.