just came into an extra 500 dollars. what do you gusy think i should do first to my 04 gt already has cai. should i do gears or off road x pipe, or tunner. which one will be first i plan on doing all of this but dont know were to start. I think tune should be last so they can tune to the mods done what do you think.

 

First you need a direction, if you jump in ***** first without a set plan, set goal and set amount of money you wish to spend, you'll wind up wasting more money without being productive.

Sit down, make a list of what you want for your car, write down what you want your car to "become" and that will tell you, without a doubt, what your "first mod" should be.

-Stig

 

You're going to get 700 different replies from 700 different people... but here's my suggestion:

Don't.

$500 isn't enough to do anything meaningful on a 99-04.

The most commonly agreed "best bang for the buck" mod is to get gears, but those will probably cost you a bit more than $500.. somewhere between $500-$750 including the install.

With $500 I suppose you could do a cheap cat-back, but unless you don't like the sound the car has now, I wouldn't bother. Changing the cat-back won't get you anything significant in the HP department.

 

steeda will change my gears for 300 dollars installed and I have been told going to a off road x pipe will do alot for my car. All i want is a little extra it is my daily driver in a busy city. dont want to make a gas hog. but would like to get 300 hp out of the already 260 hp engine. and from what I read so far getting rid of my cats will gain around 20 hp and a tune will gain about 20 hp. while gears does not give more hp they will help me get to the higher rpm were my car seams to do more. from 4000 to 5000 rpm.

 

Who said the cats are robbing you of 20hp?

 

If you can get Steeda to swap in 4.10's for $300 including parts... DO IT! That's incredibly cheap and I'd be looking for the 'catch'.

As for the 20hp for the xpipe and 20 for the tune... whoever told you either of those is full of crap. To get 300HP out of a 99-04 takes Some kind of FI (blower, n2o, turbo) or a LOT of bolt ons, including heads and/or cams.

 

$500, get some sticky rear tires(preferably Eagle F1 summer tires). Best bang for buck. Helps acceleration and is proven to knock ET's down at the track by 2-4 tenths, sometimes more depending on the driver and conditions. Use the old rear ones as front replacements later on.