I have an 87 Trans Am. 305. Most of the car is stock. 4bbl carb.
It's got edelbrock headers, magnaflow exhaust.

Could anyone please tell me what would be some good upgrades(worthwhile ones) I could do to increase power for under $600? Or, would it make the most sense to skip that and work towards a 350 down the road? Thank You

 

cam and intake lol thats what im doing and if you want you can call Jegs at 1800 345 4545 thats why i did also to get my part numbers but thats your best bet.

 

Yea that's what I was considering. I just can't make up my mind if I should do that or go for it all and bore out for a 350 or even look harder for a swap.

 

I know fi price is a concern you can buy a 350 Smallblock from GM called the Budget Performance. It's $2000.00 Canadian or somewhere around there and makes 290 horse

 

LT1 Camshaft is a solid and inexpencive mod to do.

Im assuming you have a computer contd. q-jet, and the factory aluminum mani. If so you could go pick up a Edel. Performer Intake Mani for less than $100 (your going to have the intake off if you do the cam anyway) and then you could (if you REALLY wanted to) use your stock carb, and to be honest thier isnt really anything wrong with a q-jet I guess. If you dont mind buying a new carb you could probably get away with $200 for a used one of which I would stick to 500-670cfm.

And check your heads! If you have the 416 casting, your sitting pretty. They flow quite well for stockers. And if you REALLY wanted to, a mild port matching and bowl cleanup would help alot (almost Vortec flow). If you dont have 416s I would look to see if what you have is good or not. I know for a fact that the TBI heads are JUNK!

Finally, the first thing I would do if I were you, is ditch the stock air cleaner. I had a no kidding seat of the pants gain just by gutting my old one, and even a tad more when I upgraded to a open element. Also you may look into getting a carb stub stack and either a element top or one of the funnel lookin guys that goes over the carb stud (brainfart).

And you could do it all for $600!

Hope that helps!

 

It will be more expensive, but it's going to be hard to beat the 50 extra cubes a 350 will give you. I may have misunderstood you, but in your post you said something about "bore out for a 350." I could be wrong, but I think the most you can do with a 3.73 bore is about another 0.030. You're still a long way from the 4.00 inch bore you'd need for a 350. Forgive me if I read your post wrong.

 

Awesome. I gotta make some decisions. I'm really interested in that YearOne but I guess it all comes down to money and I how long I can hold out before doing something with my car. I was considering a new air cleaner and I wasn't sure how much it would help, if any. But I've heard it frma couple of people now so I will def consider it. Thanks

 

I too have a 305 that runs fine for a stock smogger and that I don't want to take out and replace with a 350. So I've been looking at things to do with it. But it's hard to justify spending $ on a 305! They have several built in disadvantages.

First of all, there's no replacement for displacement. It's hard to put the effort into building an engine that's too small to start with. And the bore size is smaller than even a 283, the displacement is made up by having a 350 length (3.48") stroke. So there is not enough room in the combustion chamber/top of the bore, for large valves and to keep them unshrouded.

Then the pistons are set up for 58 cc combustion chamber heads, and don't have too much compression at that. So any easy to find high performance Chevy heads that are mainly only as tight as 64 cc are going to just murder the compression ratio further, even if the valves did fit in the bore properly.

If it weren't for these things, they could be a decent engine I guess. After all, the original Z28 302 was a great performer for a small engine. BUT, it had the 327/350 4.00" bore size with a 283 stroke and a decent compression ratio (probably too much today with our swill gas) that worked with the popular high performance Chevy heads.

I think that the 3rd gens with 305's only seemed to run pretty fast due to gearing. The 700R4 has a deeper first gear than any non- overdrive transmission that was found in the older muscle cars, and of course also had the extra overdrive gear for top end too. If they were running turbo 350's and such, I think they would have been pretty much a dissapointment.

That might ruffle some feathers, but it's the truth as I see it. Remember, I own a 305 third gen!

If you have to run a 305, I think the Australian EngineQuest company has a high performance 305 head. One of the magazines had David Vizzard build a stout 305 some time ago.

 

Hmm.. what more can I say? LT1 Camshaft is the stuff to have. I just got mine from my uncle's garage.