Originally Posted by zland

After reading and posting on this site for over a year, I think I can make some suggestions to new Z owners that will help them before they begin to modify their 350 Z’s. I believe that if you follow some of these suggestions, you will reach your goals in modifying your Z with less frustration.

1. Define your goal. Are you simply trying to make your car look nicer, building it for street racing, drag racing, autoX, track, or a show car. Maybe it is a combination of more than just one of these, if so, be sure which one is more important because they may conflict each other.

2. Set your budget. You could easily spend in excess of $25, 000 on mods if you went with upgraded suspension, wheels and tires, and a Twin Turbo alone. Someone recently asked himself why he was spending so much money on modifying his 350Z when he could have purchase a Z06 Vette that will out perform his Z and the Vette would still have the factory warranty. Know what you want to achieve and how much you are willing to spend before beginning to modify your car.

3. Determine if you are willing to void your warranty from Nissan. Many suspension mods void anything related to suspension so if you spend $2000 on coilover suspension, be ready to accept that Nissan will not fix your tire feathering problems found on many 350Z after 5000 miles with anything but stock or NISMO S suspension.

4. Determine how much of a risk taker you are. A lot of people would love to have 500hp but how concerned are you about reliability. Your car has been designed stock to provide good performance with reliability. Nissan told their engineers to design the 350Z motor to last 200,000 miles. As a general rule, the more hp, the less reliability although some would argue that fact.

5. How long will you keep your 350Z? In many cases, most modifications do not bring higher resale and in many situations depreciate the cars value. I have already seen several nice 350Z’s with modifications of over $10,000 and then be sold off for parts bringing penny’s on a dollar due to people selling their 350Z months after modifying it. Ask yourself how long you plan to keep a 2 seater sports car. For most young couples, when the baby comes, the 350Z goes.