i have a stock 86 trans am with a 305 tpi h.o. and want to get more performance without doing anything mayjor due to a low budget.. any ideas...

 

nitrous

 

lol ill pass on the nitrous.. i wanna keep it all throttle no bottle

 

ur not going to get to much advice with a 305 that u dont want to add nitrous, keep it all throttle and a low budget. just saying. theirs a build on here of 305 that ran 13's with a turbo and street lethal has a turbo 305 build going but those are involved builds and cost some $. are you just talking a few extra horse? headers, tune, maybe a cam those aren't to expensive and can be done on the weekend

 

cheap headers and exhaust.

 

If it's a 305 LB9 from 86 those things are dogs... they're awful. You need a cam and headers. That will get you a bigger gain than all the guys who got better cams from the factory.

Cams arent really cheap though. The more power you want the more expensive all the supporting hardware gets and the more involved the installation gets. Plus it's still a TPI so you have a 4500 RPM ceiling for your power band for the most part. But still, an xe256 and some decent shorties may net you 25hp or so.

A couple of points though...

1. You're in the power adder forum - that's for nitrous, turbos, and superchargers.

2. The 305 LB9 TPI motor is not the same thing as the 305 "HO" motor. The 305 HO was the L69. The LB9 is a decent engine, the best available in 86, but 86 did get the peanut cam which really hurts it. The L69 isnt significantly, if any better than the average LB9 generally. But the best mods for a 305 HO are going to be different from the best mods to a 305 TPI.

 

nitrous = fast
all throttle = slow

other than that i would just put money in the bank and save up for a decent engine to work with.

 

I have built countless 305's, insomuch that I am starting to prefer them now. The best advice that I can give you, from a budget perspective, is research cams. Everything else on your engine (the heads, intake, plenum, throttle body, etc.) can be ported out by you quite substantially. The engine doesn't give a crap about brand names, nor does it care about aluminum or cast iron, all it knows is that it wants more air so that you can burn more fuel, giving you more horsepower, and the key with any engine is the volume of air the cylinders are drawing from, as well as the velocity of it...

 

nitrous + 23 year old trans am with 205,000 orignal miles all factory never been rebuilt = hand grenaded engine..... so those who keep saying nitrous...HELL F**K NO

 

street lethal you make a good point i was thinkin about putting a cold air intake headers and do a custom duel exaust and maybe a chip what do you think

 

if its a roller cam i have a lt1 cam for sale.... i know its a small upgrade for a l03 not sure about a tpi

 

is the LT1 cam a decent upgrade for the lg4 roller motor?

 

that, because i never had one so i never did research, i dont know