Must have/Proper upgrades for newbs
 

Hey everyone, newb here and still learning about my 86. Just curious what others on here recommend for tasteful mods that are proven to do the car good. Had a lot of owners tell me that some bolt one are just paper weights so I figured I’d ask the community for some input. Thanks guys :)

Tires
Street+ brake pad
Camber bolts
DONE

Driving skills.

Hence why I plan to track, drift, and do other stupid shit (on closed courses of course) with this car on its stock wheels before even thinking of any major suspension upgrades.

Better brake pads, sticky tires, suspension upgrades, and last forced induction kit.
Everything else is cosmetic.

Yep. When your driving skills have exceeded the cars capacity at stock levels then decide what to do. Known preferences such as exhaust tone, or cosmetics can be done right away but many performance mods that make the car "good" for one person make it suck for another. Anything else is modding for the sake of modding since a bunch of people on the internet or hard parked in a lot someplace said so. If asking the generic question "what are the best mods" I would be willing to bet the car has not been fully explored as is yet.

What would you say to adding an oil cooler as a first mod then? Last thing I would want is my engine overheating on track. Probably not gonna happen the first time tracking but the extra cushion would be nice. Just curious on your input.

Wide angle anti-glare side mirrors!

That wouldn't be bad.
The first thing I would do if I was tracking would get something that gave me the ability to data log though. Then I would know for sure if an oil cooler was a good investment.
I have never been a fan of just throwing things at a car without knowing exactly what is needed though. Other opinions will vary of course.

there is nothing that this car needs. but many things that others want.

Track time. I discovered a world of difference between driving fast and driving as fast as possible. This car wants to teach you. I did it like this, achieving consistent times before each new mod, with a specific reason for each new mod.

Track time (nannies on) then with nannies off.

Semi slicks (medium), because it needed more grip.

E85 and exhaust because it needed more power to get up the hills.

Coilovers and semi slicks (soft) because I had learned to use all the grip from the previous setup.

Because science :)

Enjoy the journey and try to understand the science and engineering of each modification.

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Start with maintenance (as a forum we should start pushing that more for these guys) and an OBD reader that will give you live data on track (such as temps).

Do the oil and brake fluid, check for any knocks or play in the suspension, check your pads and rotors. Any lapping in my area that has an inspection sheet will say at least 50% pad remaining before you start the day. I've been told that the stock 0W20 oil is a bad idea for the track (too thin). I don't have a lot of knowledge on oil specifics so I can't say for sure. I'm thinking of getting blackstone labs to do an oil analysis for me.

After that get some seat time and have fun! You'll probably want lightweight wheels and sticky tires before long. You'll also notice a lot of shoulder wear and want to get more camber. I was on a short deadline when I did mine so I got both camber bolts and plates up front. max'd out the plates for clearance between the strut and the fender and then used the bolt for fine adjustment. Managed to stuff 255 RS4's up front with 'stock' suspension. You'll want rear lower control arms for camber adjustment in the rear.

From that point forwards you'll figure out for yourself what you want/need.

money.

No money, no mods.

Where did he say anything about track use? We need to get rid of this assumption that everybody wants track level mods done. I doubt that even 5% of the people on this forum ever will see a track so automatically jumping to that level is overkill.
Agree we don't push maintenance but there is also a such thing as overdoing things like oil and fluid changes. They are easy to do and give people peace of mind so they just do them even when not even remotely needed.

We see one of these "what mods should I do" threads about once a week and the answer really should be "if you don't know then you should do nothing yet". Getting shopping lists from guys using their cars in totally different ways is a waste of time and money for most.