So off the car goes to my good friends at Autovation for the first round of mild mods.
Before that I installed the Mickey Mouse stuff first: clear front corners (literally 2 mins to pop off oem ones and pop in the JDM clears), and I jack her up and swapped in the ADV1 7.1 wheels (20x11 and 20x12) with their steamroller Toyo R888's. Took it out for a spin and immediately realized how much I hated the Toyos. First off, I intend for this car to be just mildly upgraded, and it must be stealthy and everyday livable. The tires made the car skittish, tramline, and LOUD. Holy crap they were loud. It also didn't help that I am still running stock exhaust so the only thing I hear is road noise. Ugh.
The next day was spent at the shop where Lee and Derek installed the H&R springs. These drops the car about 3/4" for a more squat, aggressive stance while still maintaining the oem cockpit suspension setting control. Once they are on for a good chunk of time I will go back to get an alignment done to street settings. Lee also installed the SpeedByDesign catted and resonated midpipe. Interesting thing: the MP appears to be about 1" too short, but it was discovered (actually I had to call Chris Riggs in OK) that the oem rear exhaust section has up to 2" lateral play so we were able to pull the section up to the midpipe and it all bolted up nicely with the supplied gaskets. This frees up a lot of pressure which allows the car to make easy power once tuned. I love the sound! I want to maintain some civility so the stock exhaust stays but I'm a sucker for the look of Titanium so I installed a set of burnt Ti tips by Rexpeed.
Final thing is an oil change with the suggested Mobil1 5W30 and we are good to go!
