Hey everyone. After having my car for awhile, i've finally got some cash to begin work. I already have a full exhaust from headers back, and a open element aircleaner. Here is the next set of parts I plan to install, please tell me if everything on the list is correct.

the motor is bone stock motor except for advanced timing.

The parts would be a new fuel pump, the holley 2" bore TBI, holley street dominator single plane intake with a adapter plate, and a cam. Or, is there a better intake?

Later on, i intend to install the S/r torquer heads. But that wont come for another 6 months. What cam would be the best with this setup... The car is a daily driver. Also, do I have all the parts to swap the tbi/intake/cam? Are there other parts, such as gaskets or replacements that i've overlooked?

I'm getting chipburning equipment, thats not a problem.

I know this has been a long post but i'm a teenager that doesn't have much money, so there isn't too much room for error. After all, there isn't any reason to waste money with mistakes when I can ask experienced TBI people for some help.

Thanks guys, your advice is very appreciated.

 

You sound like you are on the right track. I am glad that you are getting the chip burning stuff because you should get involved with that right away. It will make you not rip out your hair later when you add mods. Plus it will help you understand what to look for and change as you slowly add mods.

I would save the 2" TBI unit till later. You won't need that right yet. Since you are young I assume you are poor. Therefore I would look into the LT1 cam with a carb intake and adapter plate. You can gets both of these used for pretty cheap and when combined with chip work will really wake up your car. If you have the fund you might start looking for replacment heads. Budget will determine what you look for but a set of 416 or 081 heads would work well. Hopefully this should give you some more light on your seaches.

 

Assuming i'm poor is a good assumption . I was thinking about the 2" TBI because I was reading through this page http://www.goingfaster.com/spo/modthel03.html.
About halfway down it talks about modding the stock TBI for more airflow, or going with the 2" unit. Seemed logical to me. I can get one for about half what they cost normally, so it seemed like a good choice. The motor will be seriously built up, I don't intend to swap it, so i figured if i can get one cheap, itll do everything the modded stock one would do, and better, and it would save me money later because i'd end up getting one anyway.

 

You will only need a larger TBI unit when you have a healthy heads and cammed package. The stock unit can go pretty far and tuning with a 2" unit is a nightmare for a novice.

 

DO you have to remain smog legal?
If so that should factor into what intake and heads you should use. Make sure they have EGR provisions if you do.

 

I do have to remain legal. Washington state. What is the best legal intake to run with the LT1 cam, i can get one out of a 95 camaro cheap.

 

Luckily in washington, there is no NOx testing. the NOx killed me here in Oregon. By the time I got it lean enough to pass for HC's my NOX had gone up high enough to fail. Of course, when I finaly did pass the sniffer, they failed me for noise, but that is a another story. Where in Washington are you from?

 

Suspension - suspension - suspension.

It might not seem like the fun thing to do first, I didnt think so, but take my word as I messed this up. Get a good set of gears (3.73s) and a posi. Either that or just swap in a whole rear end with 3.42s and posi, I did that with an LS1 rear end and got big *** rear brakes with it. Get a set of bilstein shock/struts and lower it. Then if you have money left, get as much Spohn/BMR/unbalanced engineering/ete stuff as you can for the rear suspension.

At that point think about what you want from the car, then formulate a plan for the engine.

Just tryin to tell you from expirence, man. I did my motor when I didnt have any money (after my freshman year in school) and it wasnt any fun to drive until the suspension mods rolled in. Plus you'll still have stock driveability dealing with tuning.

Good luck...

 

Hey, i'm in Olympia.

I'll see what I can do about the suspension mods, right now I have a friend who's dad owns a auto shop and is getting out of the business, so I can get some engine parts cheap, and i'd like to take advantage of that offer before I lose it, I can fix the drivability later on.

Dewey, didn't you run a holley street dominator carb intake? How'd that work out for you, and what cam did you use?

 

Engine parts are cheap to begin with. Your cam should cost no more than $30, and the heads used are $400 or less. Intake manifold used will be $100. Add another $100 for gaskets. Throw in about another $200 for misc stuff that you'll need, its fairly cheap to build a semi-stout engine.

Not tryin to be an *** or anything, but I was in your exact same position. I thought I'd build a cool engine and the car would be fun to drive, and it was for about 10 minutes until I could hook worth **** and I realized I had gotten in over my head in tuning. Read all you can about it starting with Traxxion's article then do a search for 8746 and read everything.

If you do go for the engine stuff first (still highly recommend against this), I'd seriously look at the PROMinator, its cheaper than buying the burner, chips and uv eraser and you can make all engine changes without leaving the car. It would definitely make tuning easier and much quicker, along with a Wideband O2 sensor (a must for WOT tuning). That's a deadly combo, Prominator and wbO2.

Its all about building from the ground-up. Do a full suspenion and get into Autocross, best thing in the world

 

No, I have a weiand team-g. currently the cam is 206/216 .447 .447 112, so its pretty mild. Just wait though

 

Does this mean the heads are finally done?

Are you installing larger valves in your heads?

By the way John...I just snagged a new 7525 to go with my 081's

 

no they need to go to the machine shop yet. i probably won't do valves, the whole goal of the project was budget. so i picked evertything bases on a 1.84/1.5 valve combo. the only thing that really isn't budget, is the headers, if you got a set of $100 specials, then everything to replicate my combo will be right around $1000. for heads/cam/intake/headers and all the parts to go with it, valve train etc.

hopefully things work out, i just need more time. i keep waiting for us to go to 30hour days, that would make it so much easier to get stuff done.

 

I want to learn more about the "PROMinator".

Searching the forums yields this:

PROMinator Thread