Looking to mod my car. Any help would be great!

[gta8857]

Hi everyone,

This is my first V6 firebird. All my other Firebirds were V8's. They were 3rd gen GTA's.
Well i have a 97 Firebird 3.8. I am looking to add some more power to it. I really dont want to go nitrous. I heard alot of bad things about it. Whats the best mods out there. Money really isnt a issue. 5k or so to spend on mods. So where should i start out at. and whats the best place to end up. I thought about a supercharger. What else would i need to go along with it? whats the best HP i can get with engine work? Like heads cam, etc.

Thanks very much!
Kevin

[AllTheGoodNamesAreGone]

heads and a mild cam are a good start.. that also meens you will probably want some form of intake/exhaust first..

for 5g's you can get alot of supercharger kit.. hell you can almost get a custom one made for you with that kind of cash.. you may want to look into that.. get a cam to match the SC and you will be running pretty quick..

~Billy

[gta8857]

Thanks for the help! Where is the best place to get those mods (heads, cam etc)

Thanks again
Kevin

[AllTheGoodNamesAreGone]

umm.. I guess a good start would be our board sponcers.. sometimes if you look around you can find a better price/selection.. once you start thinking about it some more and figure out what you really want post here again and people will give you other locations/opinions..

I belive there is a board sponcer listing somewhere but i could not find it off hand..
(anyone know where it is??)

~Billy

[Arctc Wolf]

www.zzperformance.com, www.intense-racing.com both sell good internals for our V6's.

[naptown]

Well tell us exactly what you have heard about nitrous and our cars. Also is the person or people who told you that nitrous is not good for our cars a credible person?

There is a place that sells a kit for our cars, im not sure how many people have their kit but it costs 1900.00 roughly. www.supersixmotorsports.com Its a intake/head/cam package. Although I wouldnt want their cam. Its a regring cam from crower.

[ June 10, 2003: Message edited by: naptown ]</p>

[Magnus]

This is a more basic/general question so I'm moving it to general tech.

[camaro_speedemon]

With 5k I would look into either Batmans or Stefans supercharger kit. That should be more than enough money to everything done right. Also if you FI, I would get some exhaust work done first.

[Tyler]

yea.. open up your exhaust.

if your looking for a poweradder, your gonna want the whole exhaust done.

headers, highflow cat. 3 inch mandrel bent all the way back to the muffler.

open up the intake as well. get some LCA's and whatnot to eliminate wheel hop. and to maintain the power on the ground.

put the supercharger on, get a better fuel pump, some guages, and even some stock lt1 injectors.. since they are plug and play.

or if you can wait on the supercharger. get your motor fully prepped for a Forced induction monster.

i believe stefan only spent 2200 bucks on his engine rebuild. get GTP internals, get them hardened. put them in, port and polish the heads, 3 angle valve job, match port the intakes.. blablabla. and a good cam.

then imagine how crazy you could go with intercooled boost.

ok. im making myself drool

there is a lot you can do with 5k. for my WHOLE exhaust setup. i only spent 450 buck. and your talking 5,000. so you got room to play with.

[Loochy88]

hell yeah! open that exhaust up and then supercharge it... no wait... i wonder if you could find someone to custom turbo it. would 5k be enough for that? i dunno, might wanna give it a try.

[*K*night Rider]

I was about to say that, Loochy.

If you are any good at welding and know your way around an engine...you can buy a rebuilt turbo, used intercooler, and pipes. Then make custom pipes and get a custom flash on your PCM, all for probably around $4000

IMO a turbo'd 3.8 would be a lot cooler and a lot more productive than a SC'ed one.

The only other option I would consider (besides no2) would be an engine swap. You could deffinately buy a wrecker LS1 and swap it in.

[Slow-N-ugly]

5000.00 will get you an LS1, best mod avalible for a V6 bird.

[naptown]

anything about the person who said nitrous doesnt work good on our cars?

[gta8857]

Hi everyone!

Thanks for all the info!! Its very helpfull. Im pretty new to the V6. Im use to moding V8's. About the nitrous, I heard it workd good. Thats not my worry. I have been reading posts and talking to a few local mod shops. I read quite abit of posts about people shelling there engines with nitrous. I really dont have a budget. The sky is the limit. Spending 10k on mods doenst bother me what so ever. I Know that any big mods can toast a engine. I heard that with nitrous it can happen alot faster. I was reading a post about nitrous being safe. They responded "it can shell your engine on the first shot" Most the people i talked to said that a supercharger and turbo's are safer.

This car is just for the weekends and once in awhile a 1/4 mile car [img]smile.gif[/img] The car has 70k miles on it. Thats a good idea to do a rebuild for a supercharger. Wonder what kind of HP can i exspect on a full rebuild (cam, heads, exhaustand a supercharger)

I would like more info on the nitrous from people that use it. How safe is it? Can you build a engine to withstand it?

Thanks again for all the help
Kevin

[ June 11, 2003: Message edited by: gta8857 ]</p>

[Tyler]

if your gonna go with supercharger..
and money IS NOT AN ISSUE..


then totally rebuild your engine. get everything forged.. pistons, rods, crankshaft.. blablabla..
drop compression to about..8.5;1

then get BATMANS kit.. push bout 15 or more psi intercooled, with some tuning.. and you'll be fly'n.

(im not too sure how much psi 8.5;1 compression can handle safely)