Just alittle advise. Dont spend more then 85% of that money if your using it all on your car. When you go to fix stuff on your car, you are ALWAYS going to find something else that is wrong. Imagine you spend the 2499, of course thats not adding the prices of shipping, and taxes (when you need to go buy the gaskets and little stuff at autozone). now your in debt alittle, whose gonna install those parts? a cam is not an weekend project, that stuff cost money. And when your ripping a motor apart like that like i said before, your going to find things that are wrong, you need to leave money for the little things.
Start with the little stuff you need first, if your radiator is in good condition, getting an electric fan and a 3g alternator both for a few hundred bucks at a junkyard, even if you have to go a ways to get it, will dramatically lower the effort it takes to cool the car down.
For the seats trust me, they can be fixed, have a shop weld them back up like jrichker said, for 25 bucks you can fix it, and have someone recover them, thats exactly what i did with my seats, fixed them and recovered them with vynal, its been more then a year and their perfect.
heres some pics
before:
Here they look sturdy and strong, and like i said before the stock seats can be comfortable and provide support.
After:
Now if you want those seats by all means go for it, but i personally think when your on a budget, a pair of $800 seats is just ridiculous when you could use 500 of that for other things to fix your car.
Use the money you saved to get an aluminum driveshaft (if you dont want to spend that get your stock driveshaft rebalanced and get new ujoints) And definatly get the clutch pack kit for your rear end, if your having one wheel peel problems, theres nothing nicer then knowing you have a strong rebuild rear end delivering the power to the wheels.
If you want to start getting into some performance mods, start small, find a junkyard that has a 95-98 5.0 explorer and pull the intake off, for a stock engine that will help open up the intake and get more air, for a stock engine you dont need a heavy duty h/c/i, the explorer intake is made for about 350ish hp, even with a set of afr 185's you wont be making that. Definatly get the subframes. If you want a noticable difference, lower control arms and sub frames would be the best bang for the buck. yes a set of afr185 will make a very noticble difference but for $1300 its better spent elsewhere, espcially when your not getting the full potential out of the heads.
Well i think im done for now, im tired and im rambling, point is their so many possible things you can do with that money, just pick what you really need and start with that, not with what you want.
