Hi everyone, I just bought an '05 RL last month and I'm pretty impressed. It certainly doean' t feel like it's 15 years old. I'm mostly interested in performance and creature comforts, and some DIY (while doing it as right as I can). I've always wanted a great sound system, and this might be the car I do it with. Any broad tips or trick would be appreciated.

 

welcome!

it is very hard to gain horsepower from these cars. additionally, a sound system and performance dont really go together. Because, a sound system will be heavy...One way to extract performance from a car is to lighten it up.
one can spend a few grand up to $5k and not make the car any quicker or faster. just because it's so hard to extract power from the platform.
so a free way to extract power would be to strip the car to make it light weight.

however, that goes against your two goals of sound system and creature comforts.

 

The car honestly feels like a refined powerhouse. There's not much more I'd really do for performance. Maybe hack the ecu and tighten up some timings, but that's about it. If there's anything I can do for the shifting, that'd be cool.

 

cant hack the ECU, currently there's no way to tune the RL.

I would start off with basic maintenance. swap out the tranny fluid for some fresh fluid and perhaps change out the tranny pressure switches.

 

Fair enough. I'll keep those things in mind. It might be due for a tranny flush anyway, sitting at 92k

 

yeah, I would swap out all the fluids.....
coolant, brake, oil, tranny and any others i'm missing.