Hey guys.

Phew, been a while since I spent so much time looking through the boards. Mainly because of school, but also because there's so much going on around here I don't really feel like spending too much time reading anymore.

But not like I haven't forgotten about my car. She's been taken good care of, at least by me - can't say much about everyone else First, I have more ugly dents in my car than who knows what, and to top that off, my mom hit the neighbor's mailbox at 40 an hour while coming home from a party late at night. Needless to say she didn't file an insurance claim since she'd go straight to jail for DUI.

But I finally got the green light to finally fix the massive hole in my fender, so I'll be doing that this week if nothing major happens. And along with that, I'm planning on modding her a little bit with whatever is left of my college refund. I was saving it for a possible swap from my LT to the new SS/TC, but that's not going to happen very soon at this point.

-------------------------- TL;DR: I wanna mod my car.

So, I have about $1500 to spend in mods, possibly $2000 if I'm lucky. The thing is that I'm not interested in performance at this point. Besides having an auto, I don't have the kind of money necessary to build a nice, fast car yet - I'd always be limited to bolt-ons and things of that sort. So I'd rather spend that money and leave my car at the good-looking side. Not that I don't love the way she looks, but there's so much room for improvement...

Anyway, I made some contacts over the past few months and got to know a guy who owns a body shop not very far from here. He's fixing the car and if he does a good job, I'll go back to him to do the work.

Basically, what I'm mainly looking at:

• Wheels and Tires - I'd like to spend less than a grand for both. I'm in need of new tires for my car anyway, so instead of wasting ~240 in crappy 15" continentals at the dealership, I'd rather get nice tires for nice wheels.
  
• Ground Effects/Body Kit - I love the RK Sports ground effects kit with the small problem of having two exhaust holes. While I think dual exhaust are sexy, I don't think it'd work for my car as it is now. What it'd do is make it look f'in rice.
  
  Apart from the RK Sports kit, the stock SS bumpers are my favorite. OEM is probably expensive as hell though, so maybe I could find some at a salvage yard or something like that. I know a lot of the LS/LT guys here have them, so it wouldn't go off on a tangent.
  
• Springs - I need to get these as soon as I get the new wheels. The LS/LTs look like tractor trailers without them while sitting on 17s/18s, so I don't wanna make that mistake. I'm planning on Tenzo R's due to the drop level. I want the car leveled, so it needs to have a bigger drop in the back than in the front.
  
• Hood - This would be my last choice for modding, but they make the car look so much nicer it's ridiculous.

What do you guys think? Sure not everything will fit in my budget as of now, but I'd like to get the bigger stuff first and then move on to other things. Projectors are also on my list of potential buys, since I screwed up with my headlamps when I painted them. A Megan Cat-back would also be interesting to get, since it has the most quiet sound of the mufflers I've heard. For once I don't want everyone around me to hear a monstruous whine when I'm only cruising at 35. That's for fast cars and 1993 orange-and-green civics.

I also used to think spoilers were cool, but after seeing a 'Balt with no spoiler, SS/SC kit and leveled, I realized how nice it looked. No going back now.

Oh well, I'll make a list of potential mods later. Not everything is expensive, but small stuff like one coat of Niteshades on my rear lamps, shorty antenna make a huge difference in the looks of the car. Gotta write'em all down later.