I did quite a bit of research on the chip first.  I went to all of the sites to read what they each had to say about their own product.  I started to also read the forums and see what owners had to say.  I eventually narrowed my choices to the following: MTM, Garrett, APR and TAP.  I did some more reading and questioning of current owners of the various chips, and narrowed my choices down further.  I eliminated the TAP pretty fast.  Not too many people had too many good experiences with them from what I read, and besides, their numbers didn't seem to be really backed-up.  I also dropped the APR chip from the running for basically the same reasons.

It was now down to MTM and Garrett.  I had a hard time with this one, but it was settled by Garrett Lim himself.  He was the only vendor to actually call me!  He took the time to call me on quite a few occasions, and explained what he actually did to tune his chips.  I appreciated the fact that Garrett never once asked me if I was going to buy one of his chips.  He told me the good and bad points of his chips as well as his competitors’, and I appreciated that.

I ruled out the MTM chip when I compared the prices (the MTM chip was $200 more expensive than the Garrett), and found out that Garrett planned on upgrading his chips to more hp and torque figures than MTM was touting!

I was not prepared to give-up my car for two or three days to send my ECU to Garrett or AWE-Tuning in Philly.  I decided to make the drive down there and have AWE do the install while I waited.

I decided on the springs pretty fast.  The Borla is basically the only exhaust that is currently readily available for the car.  I looked at the Scorpion and one other that I can't think of right now.  I like the one-pipe look of the Borla, and don't mind the $500 price.  I have read plenty of good things about the Borla, and only read bad things about it when it applied to an A4.  So I knew I was going to get the Borla.

The springs were another easy one.  I ran across a large ad for H&R and read it.  I then went to a few different websites and then read about Eibach springs.  Eibach seemed to be geared more towards a race setup, at least at the time.  I liked the idea of a European "stock" ride height.  The lowering of the car by 1.3F"/1.2R" was what I was looking for.

I met Jenner, and one night along with Denny, was able to compare our two cars.  I was hooked once I saw what Jenner's car looked like lowered.  It was awesome! I then got to drive his car, and wow!  Jenner had a Garrett chip and the H&R Sport Springs.  This was the same setup I was looking to get.  I could not believe how much the car seemed to come into its own with these modifications.  I told Jenner that I planned on getting these same modifications and now was totally sold on the idea!