Hello I've been lurking around here for a bit and I think this is a great site to come to for advice.

I recently (3 months or so ago) purchased a 2002 sunfire gt (2.2 ecotec, 100km on car, 81k when bought) and this is my daily driver. I drive it about 250km a day beleive it or not and I'm wondering on what mods I can get that won't affect my reliability or reduce my gas milage by a lot. So far I have only done a few things to my car (restrictive work schedule for getting it in a garage) So far I have bought and installed an AEM Cold Air Intake (Which i love) and I own 4 Eagle f1 ds-g3 tires (brand new, liking the tires). 2 Month old brand new Alpine sound system (subs, deck, amp, etc. And I just did a semi annual tune up from my GM dealer.

So my question is what is my next move? Reliability is a must for me. And I'm mostly looking to gain some hp and torque, but better gas efficiency would be a great bonus if possible.

Also does anyone know if washing your engine is at all bad or risky to do? Sorry for the many questions :p Gratly appreciated.

How about a full exhaust? You should buy a header then have a muffler shop just bend you new piping all the way back including a CAT and Resonator if youd like. Since you got the engine breathing in more air, you might as well let it expel it as easily. This should yield a little more power and it wont affect your efficiency.

if you put in an exhaust, it would be a good idea to do a basic tune on your car that way you would yield the higher fuel economy and power as well because the tune your running on now is the factory tune for the factory intake and exhaust.

I see I see. I muts research more on tuning then because right now i don't have any idea on that :p Is it something that can be done at a gm dealership? Or private shops?

And about the full exhaust. Currently I have one with the dual tips on both sides of the car. How much longer could I get away with useing this? I'm juts asking because i'm not a huge fan on loud exhausts. Although I did like the new sound of the AEM CAI.

Thanks for your replies.

well an exhaust doesnt have to be loud it just depends on muffler choice and resonator. I have a 44 series replica which is pretty quiet until the high revs then it gets raspy but its because i dont have a resonator. Also an aftermarket exhaust is usually bigger and can let the air be expelled faster, therefore moving more air and creating power. As far as tuning goes, your in for quite a challenge. You have to buy HPTuners or a stand alone system and basically must know what you are doing before you touch it in my opinion. Many shops can do this for around 400-500 bucks with dyno time and A/F meter. For almost that price you can get the software and with a little research and a couple books you can learn how to do it and then even make your money back by selling tunes. Im currently reading this book and im learning a ton and i havent even gotten to the tuning part. I thought i knew alot about engine but i guess not according to the book! If you were to do some simple bolt ons and then get a very good tune then you could unleash a handful of ponies that your stock conservative tune had hiding away.