Ed,
I am new to this board, what an awesome site.
I was wondering if you could share the upgrades on your 305.
I've read that it's on the quick side.
I need to upgrade my daily driver and I am doing all the work myself on the weekends.
About a month ago I bought a 90 Iroc Z with a 305 TPI, 700R4 and everything stock.
So far I am just trying to get it to run proper. I've replaced the valve stem oil seals, water pump, and other items just to get this car running proper. But as soon as I am done getting running proper. I will start looking for hp.
Thanx
Rudy:hail:

First off, i know you're meaning well, but posts for a specidic member, even moderators are generally poor form. At least you put a topic with the call for me though so others just browsing the boards will know what is in here as well.

As for what i've done, it's really nothing special. My car is really basically stock, the only real mods IMO are the ported plenum and headers. The rest i simply consider fixing what the factory did wrong to my car. I swapped to dual cats and a 3.23 rear to bring me up to G92 specs. The relocated MAT wasn't really worth any performance but it fixed heat soak power sag, and also made me dead nuts consistent at the track (no doubt from the consistency of the reading). I burn my own PROMs but there's really nothing special in it. Main fuel tables are stock (as they should be considering the car is), and my WOT fuel is just bumped a little in areas that the factory left lacking. I do have some work into my spark curve, but even that was just to smooth it and give me something reasonable to work with for at track testing.

I don't really see my car as a freak. 95 mph is nothing special, especially with headers and 3.23s. I think my tranny was eating a mph or 2 on me though, but even still, 97 seemed quite reachable to me. I run good ETs for one reason, i know how to drive. Getting out of the hole is all about rolling smoothly into the throttle. You'll always get up faster by easing into it then by nailing it and spinning. Might not feel or look as dramatic, but being the first guy at the end of the pad is always a good feeling. Even if / when that LS1 car blows by you at the 1/8 - 1000' mark, you'll have a warm fuzzing feeling from knowing the whole way down the track he was ****ting his pants losing to a POS thirdgen (their perception, not mine).

For a complete listing of what is in my car, you can check my website in my sig. Since there's not much done to it now, you can see a good baseline to build your car up to before you start worrying about more. More than mods, my car is just about maing sure everything is in working order, which is a simple matter of knowing what everything does and keeping an eye/ear ot for things that aren't right.
I would recomend getting into PROM burning if you have any bigger plans down the road (like heads/cam or engine swap) PROM burning has so many little things in it that are useful and nice even when you're stock (like fan turn on temps, TCC control parameters, idle speed, timing curve) and down the road you'll already feel comfortable with the little stuff so you can grow into more. It also lets you prepare for the future, like in my case i picked up some 22lb injectors and had them cleaned/matched rather than stock 19s so i'm that much ahead for a mildly powerful combo.
From where i'm at now, i just swapped the vigilante in on a new used tranny. It'll be interesting to see what kind of 60's i can cut on street tires with no suspension work. She's definitely a whole 'nother animal with 3k of flash stall available, more than half throttle in first gear is like driving on oil. With the right magic, a 1.90 60' and a 13.99 could be in the cards. Not too bad for a completely stock 305.

To Ed and everyone else out there,
My apologies for the lack of proper potocol. I am new to this. I appreciate the response. I will keep learning and reading this awesome site.
Thanx:

Thanks Ed, and Rudy for posting. I too have been interested in what has been "tweaked" on the car. It does seem like it's turning some good times for a heavier convt. with a 305.

Ed, please let us know what kind of improvements you see with the Vigilante. I've considered it, but have held off, feeling it wouldn't be beneficial until I put in a larger motor. If you hit 13's though, I'm gonna pick one up and port match the plenum and runners on the TPI too.

-Matt

As long as i get the governor swapped on friday (my new used tranny shifts at 6k, a tad high for stock TPI, lol) and the weather is good, i'll have slips on this thing friday night. The only real question is how effectively i can use the converter, not if it is worth a huge gain in available power. That much is clear just from driving it. With suspension and stickies i'd put money on 13s, and i'm not evena betting man.

Ed,
I went to your site and I really enjoyed looking through your pix.
I especially liked the way you use the dishwasher for cleaning car parts. My wife heard me laughing and she came to see what was up. She would kill me if I tried doing the same thing.
Nice car...
Rudy

I think The Biggest Thing ed has Demonstrated for us, Is that Going fast IS not about a Bunch of differnt Go-fast foodies all bolted together, But a Well Thought out methodical approach to Identify What's The Weak Link In the package In the First place.

Gears, headers, Converter, All of these things are weak Links In the Chain Of Acceleration.

Once you Have these things nailed down and the "links" Strengthend, You will being to expose New weak links, Cam, heads... The fact that its a 305

Its a constantly Upgrading process, But ideally you will come to a point where nothing is particuarly Holding anything else Back. Then your Combo is truly Optimized.


And then there are some of us who Out MPH Ed w/ stock exhuast manifolds and converter But just can't seem to Hook So we run slower ET's.

Ed: Where did you get the dual cat setup from?

I don't know where he got his, but I bought mine for $15 on Ebay.

I've owned / ran 3 different dual cat set-ups actually in the past year. The first was a set of stock dual cats which i ran on L98 manifolds. That alone was 2 tenths and 3mph compared to the stock small outlet manifolds and cat. Bought this set off ebay for $225 total after shipping (which was a lot for a bulky part.) Of course i sold this set when i was done w/ 'em.

Then when i bought my headers i picked up 2 sets of dual cats with those, one hollow, one real. Unfortunately the hollow ones got destroyed when my exhaust fell off one day (long story of how that happened) so now i'm down to just real cats.

Honestly, the easiest way to do dual cats would probably be with teh SLP dual cat headers. The SLP headers come with lead pipes that go all the way back to the 45' bend right in front of the cats. and exhaust shop should have no problem putting cats on there, and then use the flowmaster Y-pipe for after the cats. The only part of factory dual cats on my car right now is the cats and about 3-4" of pipe w/ a 45' bend on each.

Ed: Do you know how big the 'lead' pipes to the dual cats is? So is your setup like 2.5 inch, then it turns into 3 at the I pipe? Or is it 3 inch cats and everything? Do you think the dual cats is worth it? I've been trying to find a good way to convert over to dual cats. This one site has the factory setup, but they want like 360$ for it and it's not even mandrel bent

The factory set-up is 2.25" lead pipes into the cats. The outlets of the cats are 2.5" OD, and the fromaster Y pipe is also 2.5". The stock after cat Y was more like 2 3/8 OD into a horrible junction.

Is it still 2.25 on the SLP headers is what i meant, sorry

whats wrong with you?

Check my sig for times and mods. Just basically a bunch of bolt on mods, plus a few "free" mods that are common to our engines. Keep in mind my times were run on a burnt clutch, and a few faulty injectors... not too bad considering.