UncleSam89

i am new to this forum, but i have had me camaro for about 2-3 yrs, unfortunatly i have not been able to do much to it performance wise, i have installed a k&n filter and a flowmaster muffler, but that dosnt do all that much, anyway, i raced (well started to race) JDizzle the other night, he is running about the same but he has posi-trac as well, right off the line i knew i had lost so i backed off to save myself from some embarassment , everyone said his car is faster than mine, i guess their right, maybe soon ill be able to pull on him, any advice for a 305 automatic would be greatly appreciated

91gta_tpi

There are numerous things you can do, IF you are willing to spend a little bit of money, for example here are a few things:

Rear end gears w/ Posi-trac
headers
3" exhaust
custom chip
open element breather
ultimate TBI mods

With this right here, you should be in the mid to low 15's, easy, if you really want to spend some serious money, consider this:

Intake
Cam swap
Heads

This will get you anywhere from high 14's to low 14's depending how your car is tuned.

And of course, if you ever wanted and had the money to spend you could always swap out for a LT1 or LS1 engine, but that is some serious time and money spent. Hope this helps you out!!!

phoenix305

yeah but if you do all that you'll need sub frame conectors and some suspension peices to make sure that power is getting to the ground. and probably bigger tires. just my .02.

Cali Z

What kind of power do you want to make? If you want to have a street car that is reliable and meets smog laws, then keeping from being too radical is what to look at. You already have a catback and air filter, but their are plenty of other things you can buy that will make your engine perform better on a moderate scale. Like ignition, upgrading the throttle body components, headers, and gears. This will keep you in a budget position, but it will only get you so far. If you were interested in buying higer performance internal parts, then your car would also need other things done like tranny and drivetrain upgrades. Along with that, a few suspension parts would be sufficient in helping launches. Hope this helps.

Formula4Speed

One of your big problems is that he has 3.73s while you are running 2.73s. If I were you I'd get a nice exhaust and some better gears like 3.42s (3.73s are kinda steep for a basically stock LO3). Open elements are cheap and will help you out on the top end. Check out the TBI forum for more ideas.

Tom84L69

Nah, the stock chassis is good for about 350 hp in my opinion. A 14 second camaro doesn't need chassis mods to accelerate well.

jocww

do all the free mods first. like weight and cheap mods like just overhaul ur engine and stuff or tune it up

ShiftyCapone

iTrader: (7)

You are kidding right....

JDizzle

its ok dude, ur car is so much prettier than mine lol. he is my brother and we both own camaros how tight is that? the cooler thing is my dad has a 69 project in the driveway too so we're just a camaro family. ok question for everyone to add to his, is 3 inch exhaust too big? cuz my dad seems to think that since the 305 has a small cam and everything that ud lose too much back pressure and he thinks 2.5" would be much better, anyone w/ ideas id appreciate and i am planning on doin more mods i just bought the car this past week and the next mod ill save up for crush bent piping, however i did get my 3.5" chrome tips put on today and i must say they look beautiful!!! anywho ideas would be great for me and my brother as we are both new members.

jocww

i have 2.25 in exhaust and im putting over 450 at the crank. so id say do what ever you want. i have steps from headers so it helps the scavanging also i have deltass40 mufflers. so it all depends. ive seen 100hp cars with 5in exhaust and 500 hp cars with 3in exhaust its all up to you and their all better than stock. me on the other hand have stock exhaust on the l69

Tom84L69

absolutley not. the chassis is basically the same as a 4th gen. the 4th gen come stock with 325 hp so there you go. A good driver is more important than an aftermarket aided chassis.


My car has 300 hp and is just fine, except for the fragged rear axle, but it has over 100k on it. subframes are not absolutely necessary thoguh they do certainly help. I'm talking street car here, not race car.

and yes, a 14 second camaro will do just fine with a stock chassis. 14s aren't that fast.

posbird87

so an 82 camaros chassis with over 200,000 miles on it is as strong as a 2002 camaro chassis with 20,000 miles on it?

sorry, i find that hard to believe.

ShiftyCapone

iTrader: (7)

350hp is good for low 13's. Have you ever driven a stock Lt1 or LS1 4th gen and succesfully gotten a great launch with stock parts. They are all over the road!! Suspension mods and traction can take .5 sec or more off any 3rd or 4th gen. You are right about 14's not being fast but it is much better than 15's without traction.

bbtaz97

iTrader: (3)

i totally agree with you shifty. anytime you startadding stuff the the 3rd gen cars you have o add suspension stuff your you will need new tires every 6 months!!

IROCaholic

UncleSam89 Where in houston are you guys I am just outside you guys in katy. If you want some helpful info on making your car a little faster go to the tbi boards there is alot of helpful info there. If I were you I would start out with headers, a high flow cat, and a 3inch cat back exhaust. That will make a pretty significant improvement. Also if you have like $20 to spare go up to autozone and get an open element filter that actually makes a noticable difference aswell, not huge but noticable. After that try and get some better gears, a good intake, and build your suspension a little and you will have a nice high 14 second car. Good Luck.

jocww

in the elco all i have is the cage thats my only mod to the frame. and air shocks. becareful when u get new gears to get new axles and while ur at it get a new posi unit

o yeah i have 430 at the crank not 450 sorry typo

Tom84L69

Now you're twisting around what I said.



Yes I've driven both LT1 and LS1 4th gens and gotten a good launch, however, what you consider good may be different than what I consider good. If you have a 14 second camaro, you aren't really concerned about cutting 2 tenths off your 60', right?

I'm not saying SFCs are unnecessary, just that you don't need them on a lightly modded TBI that goes 14s. If money is a concern, the car isn't going to explode if you don't have SFCs and new trailing arms.

ShiftyCapone

iTrader: (7)

Well normally I would agree with you but recenty a guy added drag radials, and a slew of new suspension stuff and took his basically stock LO3 to a 14.7 ET. Without those mods he would have been mid 15. Sure his trap speed was slow but boy did he knock off some serious time with his ability to launch. Now add more power and you have a winning combo.

JDizzle

another question, what is a good amount to advance your timing? im going to do mine w/ my dad this weekend and i was thinking advancing it 6 degrees, could i go more? will i see much more of a difference?

ShiftyCapone

iTrader: (7)

Check out the sticky in the TBI forum for that. It should explain things very well for you.

Tom84L69

True. I would rather just dump money on motor mods, I never make it to a dragstrip. Maybe spending money on suspension/chassis is a way of planning ahead. I dunno, I'd rather wait and do the mods after I have the power, it's more fun that way.

UncleSam89

to answer ur question IROCatholic we are actually in Dallas not Houston, but if ur in the area ever id be cool to meet up and check out some othe 3rd gens

IROCaholic

Oh thats cool, check out the south central region board. We are going to have a Texas meet sometime this summer. There was one in december that I missed, but I heard there was a good amount of cars there and everyone had a good time, so keep your eyes out on that board because I am sure they will start planning the meet soon.

jimmy_mac

The guy added drag radials. A stock suspension will make those kind of gains with drag radials.

A guy at our track here did new LCA and sub frame connectors and kept his regular street radials. He can no longer run the 13.8s he used to run. He now runs mid 14s. His traction got worse. I'm not saying supsension ugrades are not a good thing, but for cars around 300 hp, a good set of tires makes all the difference in the world. I mean you shouldn't be getting wheel hop if your tires are sticky enough to hook up, and unless your lifting the front tire, you shouldn't be getting body twist very badly.

jimmy_mac

Your talking single exhaust right? A 3 inch exhaust is slightly smaller than the area of dual 2.25 inch. That is what comes stock on 4.6 liter mustangs. 3 inch exhaust is no where near to big. The only effect reducing backpressure is gonna have on a car is leaning it out. By opening up the exhaust it allows the car to breath better. You will be able to pull more air in, but that also requires more gas. But once you supply that you have more horsepower.

CaysE

In trying to keep on topic... I suggest upgrading the usual tune-up parts like ignition components, filters, etc. Look into upgrading to a carb or getting more air with an open element or dual snorkel. Remove weight from the car like AIR pump and belt, emissions stuff, get lighter and stronger suspension components. There's a lot you can do to be successful in racing.

The most important thing you can do, in my opinion, is don't be afraid of losing. There is always someone else faster than you out there, and you learn a lot whether you win or lose every time you run.

vwdave

Here is ol' vwdave's suggestions. Difficulty is not a issue to these guys since their dad probably knows whats going on. Price is what I am going for here.

Bump timing to 6-8* (Free)
Open Element air cleaner
K&N filter ($40)
Headers (With removal of smog crap $100-$200, makes tons of difference)
V6 rearend. ($100 at most. 3.42 non-posi)
SLP Take out posi ($100 + Installation)
LT1 Cam ($20-$50 Get on ebay or a local f-body club)
95+ 4.3 S10 converter (got mine for $100)
Piece of steel thats 3/8" thick and box your LCA's (Price of steel and welder)
Spohn Relocation brackets ($80)
Torque arm bushing ($12 from summit and it helped)

Get a chip tuned for that car.

Have fun.

Just for the hell of it. I run the torque arm bushing, 3.42 posi, relocation brackets and 265/50/15 BFG Radial TA's and I will get out of the hole so hard I make girl's bras pop loose. Driver has alot to do with it. Oh yeah, launching at near idle and on a slightly modded L98.

junkyarddog

I added the Hotchkis rear end stabilizer kit and upgraded to 16x8" rims with Khumo Ecsta tires. I didn't have an extreemly powerful car, but I could not get my rear wheels to spin no matter what I did, hardly even a squeel....it just went, I also had KYB-GR-2 shocks in the rear.

Suspension is the best all around bang for your buck, if you do it right and use good parts, you experience everything better from the car.

Better take-off, braking, handling..overall stability...it makes the car alot more better to drive. You don't have to lower either, but that's pretty fun too! Those who say that stock suspensions are good, have never driven a car with aftermarket suspensions. SFCs will definitly help, even if you drive great, you can still launch better. Just talk to some of the guys in the suspension forums, most agree that SBCs were noticable just driving down the street.

chevyrumble83

spray your car and dont tell him unless he asks AFTER the race so u can make him look stupid lol

CrazyHawaiian

If I still had a L03 motor, I wouldn't spend a dime on it performance wise. I did dump some cash into my 89 RS when it had a L03 and it was still veeery slow. Waste of money. If I still had that motor in my car and I wanted to make a big performance gain, I would seriously switch the heads (get away from the L03 heads) and change the intake to either TPI or Carb. You could go with a set of used OEM heads and the entire swap (inc intake) would probably cost less than $700 if you did the work yourself. Other than that, all the little TBI mods add up ($$) and the gains are minimal. If completely changing the L03 is not something you want to do right now, maybe look into some supporting mods (exhaust, gears, suspension, etc) that could be used with a different motor setup later on down the road. That will probably be the best bang for your buck in the longrun.

freestylzz

Not to discourage, but I strongly agree with Crazy Hawaiian. There was a point where I dumped alot of money in my original LB9. Now that I think about it I could have better pissed away that cash on beer :lala:

junkyarddog

Suspension makes the whole car better, so it's never a waste of money...unless your car is a rust bucket.

I agree, save the money for beer...or a new motor!

F-Body Tim

at least it isn't a 1986 305 like mine

i say if you whant low 13's and under save money and get a 350.

pvt num 11

Check out www.goingfaster.com it has a LOT of stuff for LO3 build-ups, even though his current toy is an L98 Formula now - he's had a lot of experience with TBI and modding them out. Compared to a carb, TBI is like, super-intelligent, using a chip to control fuel delivery, rahter than engine vacuum. However, I'm not about to start a fuel delivery argument, but you can stick with what you have and make some decent power.