Hey all,

As the title says, I'm looking for ways to cheaply up the power on my (mostly) stock 305 camaro. In total I think 250-300hp would be a good starting point. Smog system has been completely removed, quadrajet replaced with 600cfm edelbrock so I should hopefully be set for a while there. It has an aftermarket exhaust from the front of where the cat was to the back, I think it's a single 3" to a muffler and two 2.5" pipes out the back but I'll measure it when I get the chance. One of the first planned upgrades is to replace the crap stock manifolds with Hooker 2460s, and have a shop weld up the Y-pipe correctly with O2 sensors slightly further down than normal (I want to keep the feedback carb), which should help flow a whole lot. Other than that, I'm looking for advice on further steps I should take, and parts I should buy. I do want to keep it streetable.

 

I don't believe there is a system that goes from the front of the cat. Most all systems go from the back of the cat back. If you are going to have a shop fab a Y- pipe just have them make a pipe that connects to the Y pipe and replaces where the cat would be. I had this done and the shop I used welded it in. From there you can use the system of your choice as there are many out there. If you move your O2 sensor further down the line you will need a heated O2 sensor to get a correct reading.
Not sure what gear you have but that would be the next mod for more power. Not sure if you consider this cheap but it is definitely a must if you have the stock 2.73 gear.
A higher RPM stall speed torque converter will also give you some added performance and from what I have read here on this forum you can get a used one from a Chevy S-10 for cheap! That is assuming you have an automatic.

 

If your still running a stock intake manifold you might look around Craigslist/junkyards for a used edlebrock or similar intake. I see the performer eps and rpm manifolds in my area for 50-100$ used pretty often.

Also you may have done so already but if you pulled the ccc quadrajet off of it then you need to drop in a vac advance distributor. Summit has the Accel black tops for less than 100$ if I remember correctly. I went with a red top for slightly more $ and also because they were out of the black ones when I was buying

 

Forgot to mention it has an HEI distributor in it as well, and I'm reasonably sure the rear gear has been changed out at some point because it has a limited slip. RPM also seems a little high while on the highway. I'll get it up on a lift as soon as I can to see what's actually in there.

What I meant by "move the o2 sensor down" was having it slightly further down the pipe, as it has to be on pretty much all non-stock manifolds from what I've seen. I was planning on having a shop just weld the sensor bung in the collector or the pipe slightly after it.

 

if you want 300 hp,a 350 upgrade probably the cheapest route to that # should be able to get an easy 220-230 out of the 305 you have with exhaust upgrade,cam,carb rejet.Also make sure the intake valves are not coked up from stem seal oil seepage residue,blocking airflow.

 

If you don't have the computer-controlled setup, you don't have any use for a O2 sensor.

You have done nothing that will significantly affect your power output. If you have the LG4 (VIN code H) you are wasting your time. Yes, headers are a good idea and all, but they're not 150 HP.

Best thing you can do is to throw that thing in the trash and start working on a good 350.

 

Headers will also fit a 350, as will pretty much all other bolt-ons. The carb I have is a feedback carb; it does use the O2 sensors for fuel trim. And you're right, I've done nothing that will significantly affect power output, because I bought the car this way. The only thing I myself have done so far is begin to replace the door/t-top seals, as they were leaking badly. I'm not just going to throw a perfectly good engine in the trash.

Edit: just found this neat Y-pipe kit. Seems a bit overpriced and I still don't know if it'll mesh with the current main pipe but it is very pretty. Let me know what you guys think. https://www.eastwood.com/hooker-y-pi...CABEgL-TfD_BwE

I should probably clarify since I didn't earlier; when I say "cheap," I mean a budget goal of under $1k. I'm planning on swapping the engine out at some point as it's pretty tired, but I'm looking at a BluePrint engine (the $2.7k one) for that. May not happen soon but we'll see. If anyone can find a 350 crate motor for under $1500 I might go for that, but I'll still need better headers (and at that point, a larger carburetor).

If I do have the LG4 heads, Vortec heads are probably in order, as that's the easiest way to improve compression AFAIK. Basically, I want to get as much power as I can without removing the engine from the car.

 

In that case, don't throw good money after bad; put a set of headers on it if you wish, since they'll fit another small-block, and call it a day.

Don't make the all-too-common-on-this website-mistake of bolting-on a bunch of top-end parts onto a worn-out engine; save that $$$ for a new 350/383/406---or better yet, an LS swap.

 

Elaborate on this please.

 

My thoughts exactly. No Edelbrock carb I know of is computer-controlled. Not saying "there isn't one"; only, never seen any such. Don't see one on their web site either.

You don't want a "crate" (assuming that means, newly rebuilt and complete) motor that you can buy for under $1500. It will be GARBAGE.

 

Short of a new motor nothing is going to make much that much difference except NOS.

 

In that case what I was told was probably wrong, I was told that the carb used an internal solenoid for fuel trim (but maybe they were assuming it was still the original quadrajet).

I may just go to pick n' pull to see if I can find a decent 350 or 454 to cram in it, who knows.

 

The usual tricks worked great on my '82 LG4-it wasn't brutal or nothing,but big increase in power and driving satisfaction been there, did it and it worked quite well...easy job to install a 350 later.

 

That's not a bad idea... look for grandpa's SMASHED UP 96-2000 Suburban or something. One you can be fairly sure was running just fine until that last crucial instant, and never really had any serious stress put on it.

I'd recommend staying away from the junkyard 454. Not least because the last one is from so long ago. But even the newer 8.1 is not the most swap-friendly choice. You have all the usual big-block swap hassles to overcome (not that they're insurmountable, just, far from trivial), PLUS, no mech fuel pump, little potential for improvement without major castings changes, etc.

 

Weiand 177 would surpass you power goals on a stock 305 and easily transfer to a 350 or larger small block later. That low compression 305 would easily swallow 6 psi for alot of miles if it is in good shape mechanically. Would not be scared running 10 psi on it if I had an alternate daily driver.

Years ago I installed and tuned a weiand 177 blower on one of those goodwrench 350s in a P30 box van. Had much more power and got better mileage. It could run 75 mph on the primaries of the Q-Jet loaded down at about 15K lbs uphill. All I did was move the vacuum advance to a fitting under the blower and put a stiff spring in the power piston. Went about 4 jet sizes richer on the primaries and used turbo trams am secondary metering rods. Also used the large inlet needle & seat for an early big block. Power invreased from about 230 hp to 350 hp @ 7psi. Torque from about 300 ft/lbs to about 420.

 

Sweet JESUS. That thing alone costs as much as the 350 Blueprint crate motor. I work at a grocery store, man.

 

A $2700 blower isn't exactly "on the cheap" but then performance isn't exactly cheap. It takes time, skill, and money to build something decent that's not a ticking time bomb.

 

Exactly! I have bought them used cheap and had them rebuilt. Much cheaper than new and just as good.

I have run nitrous as well. Far from cheap when you use it often too. Might get 4 x 1/4 mile runs out of a full bottle.

 

Sure, but if I'm gonna spend $2700 on something, it's gonna be a new motor. I'm not sticking a blower on a 128k-mile engine, especially if it costs more than a better alternative. The point of this thread was to find reasonably cheap ways to gain some power without removing the engine from the car. So far, everyone's told me to just get a new engine. That's going to happen eventually, sure, but it's not in the budget now nor will it be anywhere in the near future. I've already spent most of my available cash on the new top and door seals. There's nothing about a new, rebuilt, or even used supercharger that's remotely affordable for me.

 

At a certain level, all we here can offer you (as far as I'm aware anyway), is HELP. None of us can grant you MAGIC, as you seem to want. If we had some instant recipe to more than double the power output of one of these old wheezy pitiful underpowered smog-era Malaise engines without spending any money, without risking damage, and without serious effort, I'm pretty sure it would be a Sticky at the top of the page.

I bought my late little bro a Christmas present 25 or 30 years ago. He was one of those people who, if you asked him what he wanted, he would always reply "nothing". So I bought him some Nothing. It came in a beautiful little box, maybe 6" x 3" x ¾", with a pamphlet extolling its virtues. The pamphlet was the only thing in the box. I think you should consider looking for this same product.

"Nothing will make your children listen to what you say the first time you say it.
Nothing will melt those ugly pounds of fat without stressful exercise or unpleasant dieting.
Nothing will give you a beautiful lawn without expensive chemicals and back-breaking labor"
And it just kind of kept on going like that, page after page. We laughed until we cried reading it, it was such a reality check.

I think you can see how valuable this product would be to you.

NOW: if you want to actually LISTEN to what people who have EXPERIENCE have to offer, you might start out by telling us exactly what car you have; what year, model, engine, transmission, and rear gear, for example. Then maybe tell us what's already been done to it, what parts have already been hacked off and thrown away and are missing, what's broken that you've already fixed (and not), and so forth, along with how you intend to use it. THEN and ONLY THEN we can perhaps advise you how to allocate your $1500 to best effect... keeping in mind that the best way to make a CAR faster is often NOT to mess with the ENGINE at all. It might be, for example, wiser to start with exhaust, a converter, and gears. Probably will be in fact.

Meanwhile, if you intend to get a new engine "someday", best thing you can do RIGHT NOW, is to keep your money IN YOUR POCKET, and spend NONE of it on ANYTHING until you have enough for a GOOD "new" engine. NOT just the cheeeeeeeeeeepest thing you can find that somebody will tell you is a "crate" motor.

 

Jeez Sofa, why you gotta go giving a guy a light at the end of the tunnel for?

 

Lol. To much. Yea I would save your pennies. I have a 305 in my 87 iroc it's not much to rant. It does have headers and a nice exhaust setup.. look in a junk yard craigslist for a 350 good block. Usually can find 150 to 300 dollar deals. Save and have an engine stand and slowly rebuild it. Have machine shop machine it ect. Best bet to do. BBC or sbc either way money will always be spent and more if you want the little word HP.

 

Not to be any meaner than I have been already; but I can think of few better ways in 2020 to pay too much for too little motor and end up with nothing but a disappointment, than buying a $150 block off of cragslist and having it worked up.

In 1990, SURE; in 2020, not so much. Just like, in the 70s and 80s when I was building lots of motors, we'd put new bolts into stock rods and get em "resized"; in 2020, nobody in his right mind would do that, unless it was a class rule or the like. The economics and the marketplace around our hobby have necessitated changing the way we evaluate the buy/make decision.

96-2000 truck motor, when the time comes for another motor. Pay what it takes to get the best one the yard has. DO NOT open it up. Slap an intake on it. MAYBE change the cam. Send it. Only obstacles will be changing the flex plate or flywheel, and adding an electric fuel pump.

And of course, it will need exhaust, a converter if the car is an auto, and probably gears.

 

I've often wondered why so many people who ask advice here about their thirdgen, don't mention what year the car is...

 

Title of the thread says '84 Z28.

???

 

Not only that, it's mentioned in the RE at the top of every post...

 

I think I'll start with the exhaust, as it's already half done for me and the parts are reasonably cheap and easy to install. What comes next depends entirely on how much money I can save.

 

I think the OP just wants to have fun doing some small things to the car and wrenching on it a bit. Nothing wrong with that. We all enjoy wrenching on our stuff.

 

Which 305 would be more important to the discussion. LG4 needs everything. L69 only needs almost everything. To be fair, the L69 was vastly improved over the LG4. The LG4 will see more felt benefit from mods than the L69, since the L69 isn't all that bad in stock form... For a 305 anyway.

 

Well, no matter what motor is in it now, or what motor you want to put in later (as long as it's a SBC), you can do the exhaust and it will continue to work for the others.

I would recommend a GOOD QUALITY set of headers, with the Y-pipe that comes with them; a cat; and a new cat-back. I'd strongly advocate stainless headers, and have them coated. Don't worry about what's on the car now, unless it's pristine and perfect. Take it all off and start over. Put a new 3" cat-back on it such as https://www.summitracing.com/parts/hok-16823hkr/. I say put on a cat because they're very few $$$, they make the parts that are made to fit the car actually FIT without abuncha hackjobs, and, ya just never know.

 

That's, uhh...

that's the catback kit that's already on there. And it's new.

 

Good start then.

 

Have you done a leak down and compression test on the current motor? If it has issues, why spend the money on it unless you plan to pull and rebuild it?

It might worthwhile at that point to either spend that 1k on useful stuff to keep the next motor from wrecking the unibody. Subframe connectors, a steering box brace and rear suspension/upgraded rear axle stuff might be worthwhile. That would give you some time to design the next motor for your car and be able to drive it in the meantime.

If you still want more get up and go from the current motor then maybe look into a cam. I have read pulling the radiator/front bumper cover allows one to pull the cam from a 82-92 F body while the motor's in the car.
Good luck with whatever course of action you choose!

 

I might retract my "tired" statement - it does have 128k miles on it, but it only smokes on startup (valve stem seals) and it seems to have plenty of power and run fine otherwise. No idea what oil pressure is like as the gauge is wonky as hell and the sender doesn't seem to read right, but I drove it 70 miles home on the freeway and it didn't explode so it's safe to assume it's fine for the moment.

 

I agree with the advice here. Good set of headers, matching y-pipe and a 3” cat connected to your current 3” cat back exhaust would be my first upgrade. It will sound good and add some power. If you have the L69 305 with the dual inlet air cleaner, then that’s good. If it’s an LG4 with a single inlet, replace that with an open element filter (unless you can find a used dual inlet, but those are pretty rare these days). Fix the valve seals without pulling the heads, but otherwise leave that 305 alone and save for a 350 crate motor if you want to upgrade further.

 

I did cam, full exhaust, edelbrock intake and Holley DP on an LG4 back in the day and it was about par with my stock 305TPI car when I got done. I never touched a 305 again only did things that could later go over to a 350 swap..gears,exhuast, tc, etc..

 

Oh, that's one way to tell? Yeah, it's an L69 then. Still has the factory air cleaner and intake pipes going to the front of the car.

 

Well, maybe. Someone could have added the dual snorkel air cleaner sometime in the past though. Check the 8th digit of your VIN number. The low output LG4 305 will be an H and the high output L69 305 will be a G. Also, the L69 should have an electric radiator cooling fan. The LG4 had a mechanical fan in 84'.

 

Yup, it's a real HO. Neat!

 

That’s good news. You’re starting at 190hp instead of 150.

 

Cylinder heads are the ticket, but unfortunately exceed your budget...

 

Personally, I would not spend the time or money on any internal upgrades to the 305. I would stick to bolt ones like headers that can transfer to a new motor and just have fun with the 305HO and swap to a new 350 crate motor later on when funds are available.

However, if the OP wanted to get a little more out of that 305 on a tight budget, maybe grab a good set of used 305 Vortec heads from a 96-00 pickup, clean them up, lap the valves/seats, new springs and valve seals. Add a new set of 1.6 rockers and a vortec 4bbl intake manifold that could swap over to a 350 w/vortec heads later on.

 

Might get some later, we'll see. Currently saving money for repairs to my daily, which may or may not have a bad MAF and several hundred other issues. The budget I set was more or less a rough estimate of what I was willing to spend on the engine, as I do want to have some fun with it before I put a crate engine in it. I get that it isn't the most efficient way to spend my money, but after my last project car I'm fine with not pulling an engine every four months.

In unrelated news, Something's up with the electrical system - previous owner is/was "a professional electrician", and he put in a new radio. He wired it to the same circuit as the door locks and the hatch solenoid, and stuck a 25-amp fuse in place of the 20. It doesn't charge much at idle and it'll blow the fuse if you try to pop the hatch with the radio on. Fun stuff!

 

Keep looking - you might find something like these:

 

My favorite's the 45-amp auto-alert fuse. The 2000a slow-blow is a close second.

 

Always good to REPAIR a broken car before trying to "modify" it... there are few things more hilarious and misguided than driving by somebody bolting some KROME gadget onto their immobile lawn ornament with grass growing through the wheels.

The radio does in fact require 2 power feeds: one controlled by the ign sw (duh), and one that's hot at all times, to keep the clock, pushbutton memory, etc. alive. Why this individual didn't just use the wires that the factory provided for the purpose is and shall forever remain a mystery. Which I guess shows that just because someone is a "professional electrician", doesn't necessarily mean that they understand how a car is wired. Maybe they can handle houses (or maybe not...) but even so, knowing the one thing isn't automatically guaranteed by knowing the other.

 

My old room mate was all about putting wheels on a project car that wouldn't run or drive. I think it was more about the wheels than the car. He was also awfully proud of his first set of 20" wheels.

 

One possible idea for your 305 is maybe inquire with a local community college that has an auto mechanics program. I had a local Vo-tech school rebuild the Rochester carb on my Z28. If I remember correctly I only paid for parts. If they could do a basic rebuild and you had the heads ported and polished maybe that could give you the performance you want for now..

 

Sounds my late little brother. My condolences. The memories are eternal. We keep cherishing them,

 

Hey guys, forgot to mention - what with the supposed stimulus checks (which may or may not exist, but anyway) and getting loads of hours at work, I've decided to save up for a crate engine from Blueprint as that's now going to be a months-long process instead of years. Probably gonna go with this one: https://blueprintengines.com/product...16369006018626 . I'm thinking the "fully dressed" ($3499) version as it seems like the best deal. Will probably need an upgraded 700R4 to go with it but I'll burn that bridge when I come to it.