Yeah having some mechanical knowledge would save you a heap! Unfortunately the only mechanical knowledge I possess(if you can term it that) is building and racing R/C Nitros! Haha, yeah funny but actually not that far from the 'real' scale.
Anyway your list of mods, even though just parts, is not as expensive as I imagined although I'm guessing some of that would actually be quite dear in labour had you paid for it?
I have an incredibly addictive personallity so I wont be supprised if I get bitten by the modding bug! lol I didn;t realise how much can be done until I came across this site. This is going to be very interesting...
Cheers