I am coming up on my high school granduation soon and will come in to some money. I want to turn my 87 Z28 into a car the can hang with the the newer cars. This will take a few years but i want to start off slow and do it right. What would be the best order to buy things for my car. I was thinking suspension upgrades, frame work, and brakes to start. Eventually i would like to swap to a ls1 so i felt that upgrading the brakes would be the first thing on the list. what would be the best way to do this, also i would like to install a posi unit at the same time. I would like to keep a almost stock look and would want to use iroc style rims. I am planing to atend a tech school so i hope that i will be able to turn my humble ride into a sleeper power house.

 

Well first of all congrats on finishing highschool, I just did that myself last year. Secondly seems like you have some plans on what you want to do with the car. Now there is no "proper" order to go about doing things, but there are some things should be done before anything else. Give us some more details on the car, is it a hardtop/t-tops? Auto? How many miles? What engine? and so on. This will help us on the boards to guide you in the right direction.

The first thing that should be done with any car is a tuneup. If you haven't done so already a tuneup will be most beneficial, especially to a car in which you dont' know much about the prior history. If you have good records about the car then you can determine what needs to be done from there. If not, then a list of typical tune up components can be listed so you can get started on that right away.

With that being said tpyically the first modification that should be done on a thirdgen should be Sub Frame Connectors. The unibodies flex a whole lot, and this is a cheap and affordable way to take care of that (Especially if you have t-tops or a vert). It'll also get rid of a bunch of rattles and squeeks that you might have.

Then personally I would move on to exhaust. Getting yourself a nice set of headers/cat/catback combo will yield a good power gain over your stock manifolds. Just make sure that you get headers that will match up to a 350 also when the time comes for it.

This is all my opinion from my experiences with my own car and from what I've gathered over the past year's on these boards. Once again welcome to the boards and have fun with the car.




oh yea post pics too!

 

headers and exhaust before subframes.

Otherwise, you don't have much of a prayer of getting the exhaust in.

 

its a 87 z28 305 with a 4b carb hard top i don't know the miles right at this moment but its a lot we tuned it up in my auto tech class it was runnign rough. The guy i bought it from wanted 800 for it i got i for 500 the only problem was one the the plug wires didn't work now its running smooth and hasn,t let me down since i bought it. tho passing smog was a pita sorry no pics i don't have a camera or a scaner.