What mods should I do?

 

Welcome! Whats your budget? But most go for intake, downpipe and well exhaust but we know that doesn't add much hp and its mostly for sound. You also have suspension stuff just depends on what route you want to take. But for sure a tune would be the best bang for your buck

 

Welcome to the forums!

Basically what Snail said! I have kept mine with an Intake Downpipe for the 9 years ive owned it, I finally ordered some KW coilovers, intercooling piping (injen upper/TR lower), TR intercooler, and will be getting tuned!

 

Intake, downpipe, exhaust, and tuning. That will get you a decent power jump. Where in VA are you?

 

NOVA. Likely going to wait til the Cobalt isn't a daily to do the intake so I can pass emissions without hassle.

I don't know any tuners in my area so I was looking at sending my core to ZZP for the tune. They were saying it's best to do tune, intake etc all at one time since you won't get much upgrade from stock parts.

 

Best bang is the idea, 1-2k to start. I wouldn't want to do more than 325 or so BHP, so keeping the factory turbo. Looking at much of what you suggested. For suspension I don't necessarily want a stiffer ride but would want to minimize wheel hop. Thanks!

 

​Sounds awesome. I read low particulate filters like K&N contribute to valve build up. Have you run into that? Not sure if a catch can can mitigate it but at 110k for me that is a concern. I've never owned a DI engine before and wonder if I am losing power from not doing something early on.

 

Rotated transmission mounts help with wheel hop some, also contol arm bushing are said to help as well. OTTP offers a full a set with all three trans mounts and they have an engine mount that matches as well. ZZP makes rotated mounts and an engine mount. and Powell makes rotated mounts.

This is true the stock ECU has what we call "learn down" basically your ECU is trying to keep 260 HP 260 TQ, so adding parts might change the HP and TQ curve but it is still going to try and limit your power. You can add the parts and then tune for themat the same time that is fine. I added my intake, catless DP and exhaust long before I tuned. I tuned with ZZP as well. My first tune was thier tune by mail. it worked out pretty decent. I made 300whp and 360tq. I bought HP Tuners after that and had them return for my K04R turbo. I have HPT, and could do the reflash for you if you didn't want to send the ECU to ZZP, but you would have buy the credits for HPT to unlock your ECU. The upside to that would be that I could datalog for you and we could send it back and forth with ZZP a few times and they could dial in the tune better for you.

As far as emission, I'm not in an emissions area, but we do have the visual inspection for exhaust, and a cat is required. I just swap mine out each year for inspection, and swap back to catless rght after.