would you guys recommend going with a staged kit (ultimate racing, vishnu, etc) or get parts seperatly?

 

I would recommend using a staged kit in order to ensure that all mods are designed and tested to work well together. At least stay with the same tuner and tell him what your performance goals are from the very start. Tuners spend a significant amount of time and money in researching, developing, testing and optimizing parts to work well together. You may otherwise find yourself with a great collection of parts where individual performance gains from each piece do not equal the total when used together. Doing it by individual parts tends to cost more for tuning time and in trial and error until you find the right combination.

Let the tuners do that for you, most are quite capable as their livelihood depends on their capability to deliver the desired performance increases for a reasonable price.

Here's a good start that may meet your needs and save you $400 off initial purchase price if it is still available:

Vishnu XEDE and Cat-back

 

I totally agree with this!

If you can afford to do a staged upgrade...go for it. i myself am a poor student...so i gotta do bit by bit...but sticking to the same tuner and you should be good to go.

 

I definitely agree... Arbitrarily putting parts together usually leads to a mismatch, and probably will not get your best bang for the buck. If you need to do it piece by piece.. then set a goal, build a list of items (complimentary based on the staged kit) and get it a ltitle at a time. Just take a little time to research if some items have dependencies on others.. and arrange to do those first if you can afford it. otherwise purchase it and set it aside until the dependency is met.

 

staged for sure...and i mean why not do it all at once.....saves labor time (if your doin it yourself) and or costs (if your paying someone to do it).

aka if your gonna be goin for a full turbo back system no reason to do it piece-meal

save the lewt and get it done in one shot versus DP, etc etc

 

definatelly stage

 

Piece it together yourself. Learn about your car as part of the process. Tune it yourself. Go slowly, one mod at a time.

If you change too many things at once, it becomes impossible to track down a problem if something goes wrong.

 

I think it depends on the customer and his ultimate goals with the car. We have many customers (exclusive of the type of car), who want to do things one step at a time, and others who want to do it all at once. With the type of mods out there right now (downpies, exhausts, fuel computers, boost controllers), I don't think it makes one bit of difference if you go staged or not...the mods are all at such a basic level, that gains are sure to be had, and will not vary significantly if you choose to go with SAFC vs an HKS SAFR (as an example).

As for saving money, it depends which way you are going again. For example, buying an exhaust and fuel controller will not save you any money on the install side, as the 2 are not related from a labor standpoint. A package from a single vendor will usually save you some osrt of money (either in a package price, or reduced/free shipping, etc.), but then you must choose from only those products that the single vendor offers. With most vendors out there, they offer such a wide product range that you can tailor your own package based on your budget and your needs/tastes.

I agree that when modding any car, you must first sit down and figure out what you want out of the car when its all said and done, what your comfortable with from a budget standpoint, and then talk to people who have those types of setups, and see what they use, and what their opinions are. As with most cars, there are many different paths to achieve the same results, and one is not often better or worse than another.

Adam