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Goat gives a good overview of where you ought to be heading.
If you can't afford to do his entire program, realize that some good and not too stiff shocks like Bilstiens (not the Sport, the regular one) will improve handling a lot by themselves, going to a good tire (consider the Sumitomo HT 200 if you are in a non-snow area or are willing to get some dedicated snows) and do the tire upgrade when you need tires, put some better brake pads in when you need pads (basically just avoid the cheapest pads).
This won't do all Goat's program will of course, but it's very cheap in terms of extra money spent over just replacing brake pads and tires with the cheapest options, and it provides a lot of bang for the buck.
A proper tuneup will probably net you 5-10 HP and better MPG as well. I would avoid the temptation to put a chip in a car with a well-worn motor, most chips that offer significant HP gains do it by advancing the spark to the point you have to run 93, not 92 but 93 octane premium. And your cooling system, etc. etc. had better be in near perfect condition, these monkeys didn't "leave anything on the table" in terms of spark advance.
well .. thank you for breaking it all down for me. ill follow goats program as i have the money of course. now i just need to find out what kind of tires and break pads i have. b/c i dont feel like my breaks give me the best breaking power. i have ceramic breaks. what do you guys think?
woops .. never mind on that .. i didnt know they made performance ceramic break pads. right now im looking at hawk ceramic import/lux break pads. i would have to assume that hawk makes good break pads lol
uhm .. i know not to go cheep .. but i found Kumho Ecsta ASX tires .. 62 bucks a tire. they are ultra high performance all season. so they say .. i would like to know from the guys like you whether this is a good buy or should i look for something different?
I used to run Kumho Ecsta MX tires as street tires on my GTO. Cheap doesn't always equal bad. I personally think the Kumho's are great tires and one of the best bang for the bucks out there. When I say "don't go cheap" I'm not necessarily referring to price. It more or less means buy the best parts you can for those areas. In the case of the Kumho's you are looking at tires for $70 that perform like $250 tires, nothing wrong with that.
I'm sure you know about tirerack.com, but it's a good resource when you are looking at tires, rims, brakes and even suspension components. Just enter your year/make/model and they will give you all your options accompanied by professional and customer reviews as well as ratings.
When you are looking at the brakes, I recommend you upgrade rotors and pads at the same time to get the best performance. tirerack.com can show you what is available for your car. When you are looking at pads, stay away from anything that says "race" and look for pads that are "performance street". Brake pads are designed to operate at a certain temperature and chances are you will never get enough heat in "race" pads driving on the street for them to work right. "Performance street" pads are designed to give you the best performance at a temperature range that works well on the street and occasional heavy use. "Lux" pads sacrifice some performance in order to be quieter and generate less brake dust. They are better than stock, but not as good as performance street pads.
When it comes to brake rotors, there are a ton of choices, but stay away from drilled rotors. The most common stock upgrade are "Powerslots" and "Brembo Blanks". Both are much better than stock rotors and will dissipate heat and resist warping much better.
It really depends on the drilled rotors. There are high end drilled rotors that are fine, but there are a lot of cheaper ones that are very prone to cracking. Additionally when you are talking about brake performance it is all about surface contact area. Drilled rotors actually reduce the surface contact area generally giving a drilled rotor less braking performance than a solid rotor of the same size. Additionally drilled rotors are really intended for track use and they just aren't as durable or long lasting as slotted or solid rotors.
When it comes to street cars whatever benefit you get from the drilled rotors in terms of dissipating gasses is pretty much eliminated. For a street car I would tend to stick with solid rotors, but good slotted ones (like Powerslots) are also a viable choice and both will last a lot longer than drilled rotors.
I would say if he has the base model VW jetta he could pull parts of a wrecked GTI verion of the same model year also the Golf and jetta use the same part so find a wrecked 99-01 Golf GTI and pull the Upgraded disc brakes front (12.3" vented rotors) and rear (10.3" vented rotors) and stiffer GTI supension parts off and snag the factory option on GTI only reccaro front seats if they are still intact.
uhm .. idk if it makes a difference but i have a passat.. generally i see alot more jettas and gti's than passats on the road. so yea .. like i said .. idk if it makes a differnence.. but my roters seem to handle things quite well .. pluss they are brand new b/c i destroyed the other ones
uhm .. i was looking at suspentions on suspenssion connection.com. and at first i saw springs for 70 bucks. they were eibach prokit. like the ones shown on pg 2 of this forum. but as soon as i went to the ones for the make and model of my car .. why did the price jump from 70 bucks to 224? does it matter if i get the ones that are 70 bucks rather then the same ones for 224? does it make much different that its specificly for my car or would they all be the same anyway?
Last edited by vassba; 09-23-2010 at 05:38 PM..
Reason: idk
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