What do you want out of the car? Is this a 99% street car? Its not like you can run a 10.50 pass through your neighborhood, so build it in a way that wont leave you spinning the tires for 3 blocks. I like my TE-44. Does plenty for what it is and is an 11 sec capable turbo. Spools really quick and makes street driving a blast.
Go through all the sensors and replace whats bad and adjust what you can. gnttype.org has all the articles on how to do all that. Clean out the IC, replace check valves, replace the EGR valve and gasket, and clean the EGR solenoid filter. Replace the charcoal canister solenoid. Pop the connectors on the fan relays, unbolt the relays and clean all the old black tar off the connections with ronsonol lighter fluid. Alot of these cars fans dont work right because of the poor connections here. Get new MSD wires and some plugs that are 2 steps colder than stock. Throw on an adjustable fuel pressure regulator. Make the car solid and reliable before you tear into the motor. Get a 340 walbro pump and hotwire kit from racetronix. Get some sticky tires. I have dunlop sp sport D40's. These hook better than my nitto DR's did and the tread lasts alot longer. Sticky tires are one of the best bang for the buck mods you can do. Get an RJC boost controller to help spool the turbo alot faster. Get an external tranny cooler. From here, move onto bigger things like intercoolers, alky kits, bigger turbos, bigger injectors and a chip. I have MSD 50's, an LS1 MAF from a junkyard for 80 bucks, a translator and an extender chip. I can tune everything myself with this. I cant imagine running a chip you cant program yourself, after having this. And the first thing you should buy is a scanmaster 2.1 or direct scan. Makes tuning and adjusting sensors much easier. You'll also need it to get your BLM's in check...a very important thing. People have run really quick with the stock torque converter, but this is also a great bang for the buck mod. The turbo will spool quicker and it will bring your engine into the powerband quicker and multiply torque better if you get the right one. The art carr TC I had made it feel like it had 100 more hp, but it was a non lock TC. If your valvesprings are old, replace them. These cars tend to have old valvetrains with old springs. My rpm's cant go above 4800 under full throttle cause they're wasted. Theres alot of HP to be had there. Also get a 3" Downpipe with a 3" test pipe that has a built in dump to bypass the catback when you want.
