hello, i recently purchased a 1989 Camaro 305 V8. i am 16 and am learning on most work on cars. i have done a few body panels and am ready to start on engines. i have stripped a couple and put them back together. i am curious on what i can do to make my car faster but keep my bucks low.

i have been suggested to get a shift kit (trans kit), the chip/ computer, and a posi drive train 4.11 . i will be doing most the work with a friend or two. i am just curious on what i should be looking for and what may be the best solution. thanks in advance.

 

Take a look at the stickies at the top of the page, they go over the most popular mods for TBI thirdgens.

Basically the exhaust is the first place to start with the engine. Replace everything from the headers on back with "tpi" specific exhaust as it's larger than the TBI specific pieces. Then an open element filter along with "ultimate TBI mods" are a quick and cheap mod that may add a few ponies.

After exhaust I would skip right to gears and a posi. 4.11's are way too deap for a stock 305 or even most street cars for that matter. The 700r4 has a very deep first gear that has a .5 ratio deeper than a tubro 350. So a set of 3.42's will be almost as deep as 4.11's but keep your revs under 2500 rpm on the highway. The 4.11's would have your close to 3000 rpm.

Stay away from off the shelf or mail order chips, they really don't do much and if you have modified your engine to the point of needing a custom tune then you should learn to burn your own chips as it's impossible to tune via telepathy (aka a parts sheet)

 

 

ahh yes i should have noted, when purchased the car had Edelbrock exhaust system put on.

but i was also suggested that a 3.73 posi trans would be ok for the drive train. how would that effect my spedometer? i heard that it will be off by a lot.

now what would a trans kit/ shift kit do for my car (the gaskets and such)

 

the difference in your speedo will be linear. a 2.73 to 3.73 change will result in something like a 27% difference to your speedo. if we round off and just say 25%...when you're doing 30, it'll say you're doing 40. at 60, it'll say you're doing 80, at 90 the speedo will read 120...you get the point. so in suburban areas where you're supposed to be going 30, it won't be too much of a hassle, wheras on the highway, it'll be a royal pain. change the speedo gears to match your new rear gears if it's at all possible, consider the cost a trade-off for all the speeding tickets you won't accidentally get, heh.

as for ratios, you can expect your highway rpm's to go up 27% as well. so if you ran at 2000 rpms on the highway, it'll now run at 2540. that's a large increase, and I wouldn't go above that.

personally, a 3.23/3.42 would be ideal overall, especially if you match it to a 2000ish stall converter. that would be a mean combination on both street and strip.

also, some frame/suspension upgrades could drop a few tenths off of your track times, as well as making the car far more fun to drive. perticularly sub-frame connectors and lower control arms. I'd suggest doing the exhaust before the SFC's though, it can sometimes cause an issue.
----------
doh, forgot you already had the exhaust. forget that part.

oh, and shift kits are nice, they help firm up your shifts, and change the 4th gear mess that is overdrive. the problem is that they increase the pressure and temperature of your transmission/fluid. you NEED a cooler if you install one, and if you don't rebuild it at the time, it's likely you will be soon after.

also, I've heard horrible things about B&M shift kits, I've used transgo, haven't had a problem with it. I wouldn't suggest doing a shift kit first though, it's not really all that neccessary.

p.s. a higher stall converter will raise the temps of your tranny too, and a tranny cooler would be a good investment no matter what, even if you keep it stock.

 

it is the other way around. speedo will read higher than what you are going. when i went to 3.73's, before i changed speedo gears, it would read 110 when i was going about 85.

 

fixed it, thanks.