As predicted, it didn't take long for me to cook some grand ideas up about where I want to head with the car.
I have long term goals for it, by long term I'm talking 2+ years down the track when i'm earning full time coin.
The reason I bought this car was because it is 100% (literally) more fuel efficient than my last car. And due to the fact i'm still at uni and therefore not earning a heap of money, I wanted something fairly stock, reliable and not requiring money to be spent on it. All those boxes are ticked.
Short term (within the month) goals:
Car booked in with STechnic for some service love- also having the guys check over it to see whether anything does infact require attention that I may be unaware of. Depending on what Doug and the guys find will determine whether or not I have some coin to throw around in the short term on the following.
-Powdercoat rims black
-STI spec spoiler (colour coded)
-New head unit and decent quality splits up front
Medium term (next month or 2)
-Replace bushings with whiteline gear
-Throw in some other Whiteline goodies (definitely front and rear sway bars, still need to do some more research on what else to look at)
-Look into coilovers (for adjustability down the track)
Long term (1-2 years)
-Wider & stickier rubber
-Brake upgrade, Brembo's maybe even some 6pot willwoods upfront
-Build engine (sleeved, stroked, and cammed ej20g with billet/forged goodies)
-Build gearbox (either just swap to 6 speed or built dogbox 5 speed)
-Supporting mods to suit (snail, fuel supply, intake, IC, manifold,
TBE,
ecu etc)
-Start looking at weight reduction options
-Roll cage
So the plan is to keep it running happily stock as far as the drivetrain go's for the next year or 2 until I graduate and begin full time work. In that time I hope to have it looking nice cosmetically and have all the handling stuff sorted- suspension, swaybars, bushes, etc etc
Once i'm on full time money I will buy a daily and hope to turn this into my weekender/track day weapon. That's when I will look at touching drivetrain related stuff.
I'm doing research at the moment and looking at how best to go about it, so I can do all the really expensive stuff once and do it properly.