I have a question.

I want to keep my car as original as possible with the exception of a few tweeks. I've added a suspension upgrade. I've changed gearing to 3.73 I changed wheels but will be refinishing the stock wheels for shows I may enter in the near future. The interior is almost back to original. I've located and waiting on the original style yellow lettered am/fm cd. I just need to locate the cargo shade. The hood which you see pictured has just been replaced with the stock hood and blisters. I do however want to upgrade some power, which brings me to my question. (Sorry for being long winded...lol)

What can I do to improve power, while keeping the stock appearance?

 

by keeping the car original, do you mean in appearance alone, or with stock, original equipment? because you can do plenty to your motor and not change the original appearance of your car.

 

Cam, porting, better muffler and tuning will increase power with no visual indication. Keep the exhaust manifolds and all the emissions equipment, those are the things that really makes an F-body look original.

 

Sorry, I should have specified. I want to have the appearance of original, for the most part...lol

 

i concur with eseibel67, but be very careful on the cam, because if you go very big at all, your car is going to clearly not sound original. i'm still unclear on just how picky you want to be about factory appearance. eseibel67's advise appears to consider that you want the motor and every detail underneath the hood to appear bone-stock. if that is the case, then i concur with him. if that is not the case, and you are like me, and want the car to have the outward appearance of original but with plenty of performance, then i would upgrade the heads to an aluminum pair, and a mild, but matched camshaft - but then there are plenty of periferal details that would go along with that such as larger injector size and tuning. upgrade your upper and lower intake. i would also instal headers and a cat-back. i think that there are one or two that actually have the factory-looking turn down tips. personally, i prefer the look of a nice set of straight back tips, double duals on a Firebird.

if you are on a budget or not down with tearing into the engine just yet, and just want to make the car a little more fun to drive, i would start with something like this:

K&N Filters
Throttle Body Air Foil
Throttle Body Coolant Bypass
TransGo Shift Kit
Cat-Back Exhaust

 

Thanks!! I'm really not into tearing down the motor just yet, but will probably go that route in a few years. I was leaning towards some of your advice but wanted to make sure I was heading in the right direction.

 

Actually you can put those on about any of the better cat-backs... personally I HATE the look of straight-out exh on these cars, to me that looks major-league hilljack, but that's just me of course... I used the Hooker 3"/2½" cat-back and Edelbrock stainless turn-downs, with the stock hangers, which keeps the whole exh up parallel to the "frame" and out of the way and COMPLETELY out of sight.

 

Couldn't agree more.

 

Some are ok. GMMG's small round tips look decent, and the SLP 2OTL is a classy and unique look. However, the rear fascia of these cars go best with hidden tips.

 

i've seen some that look "hilljack" (i like that word, btw) but to me the stock ones just look a little "weak." the Formula in the pic above is mine.

here is another one that i think looks nice.





^ that's pretty hilljack right there.

if you guys prefer the look of hidden exhaust, i can understand that. i just wanted to be clear that i meant something subtle and classy - i know what you mean by hilljack and ugly...thats why i through out the tips that came with my Hooker cat-back.