proper planning is the key to a nice car. I've been looking around the site and saw some people saying they want to turbo thier cars and yet they just got a header or exhaust or intake!?! if they are serious about turboing their car they shouldnt waste money on parts that wont work with other mods. ei. like header or exhaust if you turbo a car thats what you have to replace to bolt on a turbo kit and the exhaust wont line up and it will be to small dia. for the turbo (you dont want back pressure on turbos). and you'll have to lose the cat with a turbo for more power.

The best thing to do is to have an idea of what you want to do (race or show)even before buying the car.(ideally)
dont buy a car that will cost a lot of money to mod if you dont have alot of money. I have a friend who bought a mkiv supra ($27,000)
and now cant afford to mod it. and its funny to see what will beat up a stock tt.

if you are going for the " i want to go as fast as possible" route then remember that there is alot more to going fast then just going fast.
the car has to be set up for it.
tires- you dont want to blow a stock 13" tire at 100mph. get proper rated tires there cheap (kuhmo 512 z-rated $60 each for 15")
brakes- you dont want to try to stop 17" wheels going 100mph on stock dx brakes. upgrade to si or teg brakes or atleast x-drilled with good pads(proformance friction carbonmetalic at autozone $20 gaunteed for life)
susp- new shocks and lowering springs nothing looks funnier than a stock civic on 17" (4x4)

the point is talk to people and find out everthing you need to before you spend the money. if i could do it over. I would have done an h22 swap in my car. just for the fact that I've prob. got over $8,000 in my car to have it run safe and fast with turbo (d16z w/ 240 hp) and for about $5000 i could have done the h22 with 200 h.p. and had $3000 left to inprove on the 200hp.
I've been doing the import mods since my crx si in 1996.
if you have a limited budget, knowledge is better than a carbon fiber spoiler on a saturn
have fun and talk to you later.

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nice writeup! but i have a bit of a problem with this statement.you have the right idea, but it seems to insinuate that N/A motors "need" backpressure. thats not true. yes, if the exhaust is too large it will hurt the power, but its not from loss of BP. and a good high-performance cat will flow nearly as well as a test pipe, but wont stink and set off CELs all the time. not to mention the whole illegal thing. but other than that, very nice post.

 

I take issue with this statement, mainly because of the fact that it eliminates so many possibilities. If you say to someone, "Ok, you have two options: you can race this car, or you can make it look good," that leaves a pretty narrow window for them to crawl through. What about someone who wants a daily driver that can (for example) drop the hammer on a Mk. VI at a moment's notice? Or someone who wants to sculpt a custom body and paint job onto a car that runs 12's? The only philosophy that truly stands unchanged in the automotive world is, "You can do whatever you want..." You can put an SR20 or a 4G63 in a Civic if you want (it's a lot more common than you think.) You can put a 1G-GTE in an '88 Celica GTS with 4 different tires on it (did it in my front yard.) You can make an RR H22-powered Del Sol (there's a post on here with a link to it.) And, you could shoehorn a C32 in the back of your hatch and really get goin'. Bottom line: if you really want to do it, you CAN do it.

I bet if he put his mind to it and saved up some money he could. Do you think I got my RB26 by hoping and praying? Not exactly... I worked my *** off during summer vacation my senior year of high school to pay for it. And even if he couldn't afford to do anything, he still owns one of the most widely recognized icons of import tuning in the world; that in itself can be enough.

Now, I agree that money is an issue in many of these cases, but trying to tell every car enthusiast in the world that they need to blueprint their car out, then allocate this many months' paychecks before they pick up a wrench or visit an importer is a bit much. Not everyone with a 5G hatch is going to want to do exactly the same things as you to make their car go fast or look good.

Well, I've given my two or three devalued pesos...

 

Hey heres an idea its their money if they want to get some better parts and go fast with the basics let them, dont down people because of it, i have and intake and header and catback exhaust and i want to turbo my car in the future but not now and i want to go fast now then ill do what i want with what money i have and not your or anyone is going to tell any of us how to spend our money. I know you prolly think your helping but maybe some of us like the excuse of putting on an exhaust to spend time working on our cars and not having to worry if we are getting shipped off to Iraqi , i know i dont want to think about it or the friends i have already lost.

 

Thats true we can spend the money we want, and maybe like to spend time working on a car, And I got freinds that just left in 3rd infantry and my father also went for a year and I may even join now to but I got a good job a may put it off for a year see if things settle down. but yea I want to turbo my car so bad, but I dont care if in your eyes I wasted my money on my parts cause I love my civic and and love spending wrench hours on my car, thats the fun part of having a tuner car, and when I have time to save up the 2-3 grand on a turbo I will most defenitly now I dont know if I will do that work myself cause I want it tuned out perfect. but anyway.

 

jeez he was just giving some friendly advice.

 

Yeah, I know. I'm not angry or anything. It just sounds a little too much like preaching.

 

a car is never finished being modded unless u die, wreck it, or sell it. people have their whole lives to do what they want to their car. but i think he was trying to say for the people who want to hurry to get their turbo, dont buy things that u would have to replace.

 

or just save your money and buy a car that has it done allready like me [sm=happybounce.gif] lol
but in my situation its not like i havent put the time in under the hood or scraped the undercoat off of the bottom of a car just because you think it may have rusted through but then your wrong and THEN YOU HAVE TO REPAINT IT !!! lol owell
as for a car never beening done this is true... well at least i believe it.

 

Yes a car is never done being moded, there seems to be always somthing better that you can get. If a car is done being moded then i want to see this.