Modding Recommendations Please!

[muddyboots]

3) How easy is the car to work on yourself? Will it throw a wobbly if you haven't got a VAG-COM? This is why i love old cars, no worries on this score at all!!

Well, there's not a lot of room around the engine bay. Oil & filter changes are easy though (filter right at front of engine), as is air filter changing. Wouldn't fancy trying to do the cambelt myself though...
VAG-COM is a fantastic tool to have, not just for reading/clearing fault codes, but for making various other adjustments (backing off the EGR, changing the steering weight, enabling/disabling auto-locking, alarm chirps etc etc) plus it's great for diagnostic work as you can run selftests, plus log & graph outputs of various sensors. For example, logging airflow to see if your airflow sensor is knackered (which won't throw a fault), monitoring boost pressure & intake temps, it's a geeks paradise

4) How essential are the brakes? I'm not a big believer in the 'big brake' craze - are the existing brakes sufficient for the weight or not? Power has shag all to do with the size of your brakes unless you want to track day it. If it is the case that under serious stress (ie Motorway braking 90 -> 0) they are going to cause problems then i'll replace them, but baring in mind I drive 120+ motorway miles everyday and haven't had any problems yet is it needed?

If you remap the car or just generally drive enthusiastically, a 312mm brake conversion from a TT/S3 (which is quite subtle, hardly looks any different) provides you with much more confidence in the car, I'd recommend it 100%. Yes the standard brakes will stop you but these just feel soooo much safer.

 

[PaddyX21]

okay, cool - thanks for that!

off to look at vag-com prices....

P