AdamW wrote:I am hearing different stories about the other (exhaust & CAI) mods thou. A few people have said they wont really improve performance much. Unless they are guaranteed to improve performance over the stock STi parts I will not bother with them.
Yes, on their own they won't do much to greatly improve overall performance. CAI makes more noise and adds about +5-8 kw. While a catback exhaust will net you about +9-10 kw and some more noise (there are alternatives that do have gains without too much additional noise).
However these sorts of mods are meant to compliment other mods. Because once you do the TMIC and perhaps a dump pipe, you now have a situation where the intake and the exhaust become the bottleneck to unleashing that newfound power.
It's a horrible chain reaction effect. You upgrade one part, and find that another part is preventing maximum power gains. So you upgrade that, but then find yet another part is holding things back. That's why my car is stock. I refuse to spend money needlessly and get caught up in this vicious cycle.
I don’t mind spending the money if it improves performance of the car but I don’t want to spend my hard earned money for no reason.
Haha. There's always a reason for upgrades. Some people want the bling, while others want performance.
So from what I am hearing so far the stock exhaust & air intake aren’t really worth spending any money on unless I decide to get a whole lot more serious with the mods?
All depends on what your priorities are. If you're after absolute performance, you should definitely get these along with any upgrades to the TMIC and dump pipe. However I guess that's not always necessary. Trieu, who used to frequent this forum and had a MY05 GT, only did the CAI, TMIC, and tune and that was more than enough for him. His car was able to push quite hard even with a stock exhaust.
Good luck! I look forward to hearing about your mods in the near future.