Where are you located? I'm in SoCal, and all the good fab shops are backed up horribly. btw, I also own a Passat w/1.8T engine. They're great and will last a long time if you use the right fluids and change them as directed. You can get great turbo upgrade kits to get up to 350HP w/o changing ingine internals. Going over that starts requiring bottom end work. And, because they're turbo u'gs, you can still get good gas mileage if you keep your foot out of it, although that's not why you do them ;-)
www.goapr.com for one nice kit (inconel manifold!!), GIAC and others if you search. My desired 'zuki mods are so far limited to simply getting a good exhaust to replace the log manifolds. Custom fab in SS to last, but as I said, all the good shops are too backed up.
Looking forward to seeing this done up!!