A good budget for car upgrades

obi_waynne

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A3 1.4 TFSI 150 COD
What do you think is a good budget for car upgrades?

What parts do you view as essential car tuning upgrades? What mods would you do first? Where are your priorities? Handling, Speed or Power?
 
I have a plan for my upgrades and a reasonable timeline to do them. I am on a tight budget but the 2 next big upgrades- exhaust and LSD will be at times when I can afford the extra. In between I've been doing small things and cheap upgrades. I tend to switch between handling (like the subframe collars a couple months ago), appearance (the LED strips for interior accent lighting I just did) and power (like the exhaust in July).

-July 15 exhaust $500
-February 16 LSD $1300
-Next year sometime rear diffuser $400
 
That seems like a good plan @Guybo doing mods in stages helps spread the cost and gives you a chance to see what difference each one makes.
 
I made improvements??in stages as funds became available and don't want to think about how much it has cost BUT there have been mostly smiles but some tears especially after a dyno guru tuned/mapped my new forged single cam stroker and it detonated so badly at the track that it melted the electrodes off 2 plugs ,scored the bore bent valves and damaged the turbo and he claimed it was my fault as I must have altered something \B:mad::mad::mad:
Note I have industrial deafness and with a helmet on and the exhaust and wind noise did not hear the detonation noise.

The car sat in the man cave/shed for many months until I remembered Lee Thomas who I had met briefly when I first got the car and we did a bit of bartering where I carried out some building work on his house in return for him building a new twin can using the crank,rods and pistons.

Wile there must be many good dyno shops closer than Chapmans at Cooroy who were recommended to me by Murray Coote an ex rally champ and now the owner of MCA suspension where I trailer the car there and collect it a day or so later. Chapmans tune the MCA Suspension S13 that was 3 rd outright in the World Time Attack held at Eastern Creek in 2015.
 
Handling & stopping first then oomph. I did it the other way around on an older car and in reality ended up with something slower than a well sorted 350hp car :(

I've been pretty lucky getting all the upgrade bits for this, all brand new/unused from guys who changed their mind and didn't go to stage 5 :) Probably after they saw the price to upgrade the clutch!!! Saved around 60-70% of what I was expecting to pay.

3" DP £50 vs £250-300
Injectors £180 vs £350
Intercooler £90 vs £500
Turbo £300 vs £900-£1000

Pays to shop around and be patient!

Biggest expense now is the clutch, dmf & LSD. I've tried but can't see it coming in much under £2.5k all in unless I can find a decent place to customize a friction disc & beef up the pressure plate.
 

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