The "I'm not going to do anything to it" Build (picture heavy)

[Bwwaaaa]

I post a lot in the "What did you do to your car today" thread, but I thought I'd just put up a whole thread of what I've done to my little compact since I've purchased it. Picture quality will be all over the place. Although I have excellent photography equipment, I rarely have it on hand when working on my cars. So sorry for some of the potato quality pictures.

I originally bought this car to be a daily driver while I fix my E30. I wasn't going to anything except the bare minimum to it. But the more I drove it, the more I loved it. Eventually it turned into a money pit of a build. Someday it'll be awesome though.

Here's how it sat the day I picked it up. Missing Kidneys, no tint, and a host of small problems.





Shortly after getting it I decided it needed tint (for the AZ summer) and a new headunit (because I can't live without bluetooth).





Eventually I got bored, and with my E30 not being road worthy at the time, I decided to swap in the M3 Vaders I had in there to my ti.



I also installed a subwoofer, which I ended up pulling out 2 weeks later. The audio shop that did the work did an awful job. They broke the trim around my head unit, and put a hole in my firewall with no grommet.



The car was running pretty rough, so I decided to check the injectors after reading a few forum posts. Sure enough, they were disgusting. I put in a set of rebuilt ones and it helped a great deal.



A friend's Jetta was totaled and he was parting it out. He had these Hella lights on the front, and I thought I could make them work for my ti. So I picked them up on the cheap and figured out how to install them.



I decided to mount them where the front license plate holes were. I figured it would look best in the bumper and allow me to tuck the wires in somewhere safe.







It's all wired to a switch next to the ASC button. I went to a lot of trouble to hide the wiring and make it look as factory as possible.





I needed new tires at that point, but I didn't want to stick with the Style 2 wheels. So I picked up a set of Style 5 (BBS RC 090) wheels. Excuse the Instagram filter.







I thought I was done at that point. I had done a little bit of style, a little bit of comfort, and I thought I was happy with the car. Then I started poking around, and I noticed all the bushings were shot. And the awful Racelands (previous owner installed) were in far worse shape then I anticipated. Naturally that meant a full rebuild was in order.