I plan on buying a 88-92 350 TPI and was wondering what most of the first few mods are. I want to reach at least 300 RWHP. I have about 5k to spend MAX. Id like to turbocharge it but i have no idea how much it would cost. Im selling my 98 V6 for it and want to turn it into a 12 sec street car. Then from there to appearance mods. Any suggestions?

 

sorry to burst your bubble but it prob won't happen for 5 grand (unless you can do everything by yourself). 300rwhp is not real easy to do with a tpi setup for cheap. you could swap out to a holley steath ram or lt1 intake but hitting 12's is going to be a real challenge. just do a search on combo's and you will see what I am talking about

 

Read the stickies at the top of this board and then the tech articles off the main page.

 

Would i be better off buying like a crate engine and throwin that in there.....like a ZZ4?

 

Easier way to 12's would be good heads and LT-1 conversion. Much easier than keeping the TPI. Seriously, spend some time floating around, you'll pick up a bunch and see differing methods of how to get there. If you really like the TPI there are stock appearing set-up that can get you there if you have someone who can tune with chips.

 

Thing with LT-1 Is i dont like wiring those things....is it difficult? wouldnt ii be better off doin the ls1 swap if i have to do all that wiring....wouldnt a zz4 put out as much power as the LS1?

 

Some of this depends on what you are going to do with the car. Is it just for the drag strip only? Do you have to pass emissions? How thorough of an inspection? How setup is the rest of the car? Lots of questions have to be answered before you can get a good opinion. When you look around more you will finds what works and what doesn't.

Later,
Jason

 

"Thing with LT-1 Is i dont like wiring those things"
you don't have to switch to a full on LT1 go to www.lt1intake.com they convert lt1 intakes to work on gen I style engines like the tpi motors. you just take the tpi setup off and bolt the intake down to repalce it. uses same sensors and throttle body. will need some computer tunning but it is just a physical swap. no real wiring needed except maybe making a few wires longer.

 

Yepper. Conversion not swap. Go to John's site. He has been very gracious in putting up a ton of info for us freeloaders that like to do it themselves (Subliminal message: JOHN!! Make the spacers available seperately!! )

I'll probably do the conversion myself as I'm going to attempt to make the EGR functional, weld alot of the AL rather than use epoxy on some stuff (like the original bolt holes and spacer (if it's AL)) and all-around screw with it as time allows. If you are not inclined to do it yourself, I know a few people who have gotten their stuff from John and no one has had a single complaint. I hear very good things from others as well and from all I've seen he tries to make people happy. Really tries.

There is also a few members that have swapped both the intake as well as the heads onto their shortblocks (See John, if this becomes popular, more people will want those spacers- Oh and can you make 'em in AL? ). One of the threads was very popular (maybe we should stickie?) and showed what had to be done to the heads (more or less, though I would like pics for the coolant adaptation) in order to make them work on a gen I block.