New Car Sticky!

i live in upstate ny so he has drivin it come snow or shine...its held up good to any salt corrision well.

now remember what i said, he takes great care of it. and with that hes still had the occasional problem here or there (minor problems).....just standard/basic maintenance will keep it running strong.

thing is with parents...they lived in a different time...back only 20+ yrs cars at 90k or more were considered dead...nowadays though most cars made in 1990 or younger at 130k still run like they did at 30k (if they were takin care of).

just dont fix your sights on only ONE car... i really wanted an impreza but they were a few $$$ too much. then i wanted a prelude...couldnt find one and got my civic and couldnt be happier.  

Man, only if they could understand today's cars.

But I see what your talking about putting my sights on only one car and I completely understand. I'm just trying to keep my sights on something that is common for tuning. I really don't want a luxury car or pure breed American.  

Yea 98 chevy z71 im driving. At 263500 miles right now. Still runs strong. I can hook up to a gooseneck with 4 horses and pull anywhere i want to. Although i must say.. nothing like my 3000gt back home haha.

As for a colorado car- Impreza, Evo, 3000gt vr4. I love AWD and you would to more especially in the snow.

By the way.. 3000gt vr4's require alot of maintenance and are NOT recommended unless you can do extensive work yourself or have tons of money to pay a shop.  

Alright, well today i bought my first car - w00t w00t!

Its a 2004 Hyundai Tiburon GT V6 6-Speed. Its drives and handles real nice but here is my question:

Where do I begin as far as tuning this shark? Intake? Exhaust? Exterior? Interior?

What sites should I use?

And most importantly, is this a good first car?  

First off congratz on your first car!!!

I would say for a first car and newer driver it was an excellent choice. As for massive power like the more experiences of us looking for its not near as great but will definitely give you some great driving experience. It is FWD and NA which we try to steer most people clear from but then again most of us who say that are a little more driver experienced.

Right now your looking at-

170 hp @ 6000 rpm
181 ft-lbs @ 4000 rpm
Pushing a 3015 lbs curb weight.

First off how many miles does your car have? The first thing you want to do is make sure that your car is healthy. I know with the 3ks if they got 60k miles then your looking at- New water pump, timing belt, timing belt tensioner, spark plugs/wires, and a few other various things. May want to check in your owners manual or other owners to see what they say. Ive seen the 3ks go 250k+ on original timing belt and all. But it isnt safe to do. Mine has 103k and still original timing belt. So you can run it with no problem more than likely but i would definitely do the maintenance anyways.

Ok and now for your modifications! The gains listed on here are once again from 3000gt's which have a slightly larger engine than yours so the gains will be a little different but will give you a good ball park idea.

Intake- Not very large gains but definitely needed when adding future mods. Most people recommend well known name brands but ive been told that many ebay kits give equal performance gains etc.

Underdrive pully- Proven to gain 8-10hp at the crank with the 3ks.

Test pipe- Good for 7-8hp and (with my car allows you to run all the way to redline instead of dropping off the horsepower chart at 6800.. Should help you out in the same way).

Exhaust- Gives you a much better sounding tone and allows you to pull to redline a little easier. Helps top end out quite alot.

Ground wire kit- At $45 they're a cheap mod, BUT these will help throttle response greatly. They stabilize voltage for your ECU.

Headers- Proven 18 horsepower on the 3ks.. Once again a little smaller gain for you but a general idea.

Downpipe- Some headers are the "long headers" and this mod wont go with those. But if not then they are proven with the 3ks around a 13hp gain.

Solid motor mounts- These keep the engine nailed to the car, and eliminates ALOT of wheel hop

Lightweight flywheel- This will make your car nice and rev happy, and will add about 1mph on your mph at the track.

And lastly if you would like then a smaller shot of nitrous shouldnt hurt you too bad. With all of those mods You should be able to run somewhere around mid to low 14s im thinking. Low 14s with nitrous without a doubt.  

Oh yea sorry meant to add this as well- There are plenty of companys out there that make superchargers etc for your car. Ripp mods seems to be pretty popular among the owners i know. many have the tiburons pushing around 360whp which isnt too bad at all. With the above mods and a ripp s/c im thinking you should be pushing somewhere around that.

Also total cost for all of that (s/c included) im thinking will be around.. 6k or so.. but the s/c takes up 4k of that:P  

Alright! Sounds good, though, (I'm feeling like an idiot asking this), but when you say 3ks and 3000gt, what are you referring to? The miles on the car? The year of the car? Mitsubishi 3000GT?

And since I'm the topic on miles, my car has 45,000.  

3k and 3000gt are both referring to the mitsubishi 3000gt

And with 45k your car is still healthy so dont bother with the timing belt etc.  

First off let me say tht u guys have really given me a brighter look on what i wud want as my new car....im also one of those advice seekers on buyin tht "first car" "first project" kinda think....now i need ur advice i came up wit three options for a first car....

1. Mazda RX-8
2. Acura RSX type S
3. Hyundai Tiburon GT

any advice u have will be greatly appreciated..

thnks...........  

Well I see you must have completely missed the point of the thread, since 2 cars in your list are both NA FWD, and the RX8 is NA as well.

Generally we try to steer people away from FWD naturally aspirated platforms like the RSX and Tiburon because those cars are slow. If you like being slow, than get one of those as your tuning platform, neither will be fast without dumping $15k-20,000 into them. The RX8 handles well, inpart due to its RWD, but the performance of is vastly inferior to the 3rd gen rx7.

Like I said, if your trying to be fast, best to avoid naturally aspirated 4/6cylinder AND NA rotaries as they require a $5000 turbokit and standalone ems just to be able to begin to keep up with what a stock version of my car runs (RWD turbo 2.0), and just buy a car that is turbocharged/supercharged from the factory and RWD or AWD if you want to be "fast"  

Hey, im 16, and i get my license in 2 months. I have had som prior driving experience, but not as much as you say. But when i start driving, i will be driving a 1972 Pontiac LeMans 5.7L 350 small block V8. Is that a good car to drive? PS - the only other car i can drive is a 1985 BMW 318i 4clyinder
 
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1985 BMW 318i
-All Stock-

Sure, v8 RWD is an excellent drag platform. BUt you gotta ask yourself this, can you afford to daily drive a car that gets around 12 miles per gallon? You could easily be paying as much as $5000 a year in fuel costs?

I know I could not, thats why I opted for a turbo 4cylinder as both my drag platform and daily driver, so I could still run 11 second quartermiles on stock fuel system/ecu, and stock unopened motor with a bolt on turbokit added to it, and get nearly double the fuel mileage of your older v8s.  

Well first off i would like to say that i get my license in 10 days and I still dont have my car. I was really looking into getting a prelude however the only one that was availible was a $4,000 1995 S...Which has the non V-TEC engine. Since that didnt really work out im looking for better options. Dont know if ill be doing much racing however i want power and performance. Im not really feeling a Civic just because everyone seems to have one... I read all the posts in this thread and I noticed that the GST and GSX both were talked about a lot. I did a little research on them and it looks like they are in my price range. Im wondering what the first few mods i should do to this car should be. And how much you guys think the mods will cost. Keep in mind i will be having someone install all these parts for me :/

Alright thanks to everyone that can help,
Logan  

Sent you a message letting you know what your wondering