Have a 91 camaro rs, with the 3.1. I have, give or take, a grand that I'd like to use to up my hp on my 3.1. Don't tell me to swap it, I just wanna know what I can do to it for that alotted money. Figure 200 or even 225 shouldn't be too unreasonable. I don't mind going slightly over budget. Slightly. So what can I do that will help me reach my hp goal? I appreciate any help

 

I see you just joined TGO. Welcome. There is alot of info on this V6 are so soak up as much as you can, and believe me 98% of the memebers in this are will tell you NOT to do a swap unless its a hybrid swap or 60degree V6 of somesort.

Else then wanting a 200-225hp engine do you have any ideas on what you want the car to be capible of? Is it a daily driver or a toy?

So you have a option to either dump a grand into the car for a natural aspired build or another option is a power adder, mainly a turbo.

You can make a 225Hp 3.1L natural aspired car but it takes more money and its alot harder then a turboed 3.1L. Just wanted to make sure you understand that. The heads and intakes on our 3.1Ls are terrible for the high Rpm areas and making a ton of Hp unless those areas are tweaked and or boost is added. Here is a great example. I just changed out my heads (ported and polished 3.1L) and intakes for a hybrid set up which is using the much better intakes and heads off a gen3 60 degree 3100. I did that and made new headers and dumped well over a half a second off my 1/4 mile time just like that and even ran the exact same amount of boost as previous and alot less timing which makes the tune much more conservitive. Let alone im launching the car much softer at the track which is also slowing me down but yet im that much faster just because of that set up. So a Natural Aspired Hybrid set up is also a option and will be much easier to get at that 200Hp area if you want to stay away from the turbo stuff.

Being that you have a 3.1L, which has a good ecm in it for tuning, you will have to learn or get some one to tune it if you want to make it a 200hp+ car. To datalog it and burn chips the easy way, your looking at 300-350 bucks roughtly. This would allow you to burn chips and datalog on your own and have a wideband o2 sensor kit.

If you choose to make it a N/A car you would have to port and polish the heads(anyone can do it themselves with a little research and help) Get a delta camshaft(either a 260 or 272 grind) and work on the exhaust adding headers and soforth.

If you choose to make it a turboed car you can follow and read up on project89 and myselfs stickys on the top of the V6 area. IIRC I did my initial turbo build for arround 1 grand and that was with the cam, a walbro fuel pump, and a 3000rpm stall converter on top of the tuning and turbo parts. The only thing is you have to know or be able to learn how to weld for it to be cost effective and have the car down for a month or 2 or 3 depending on how long it takes you. When I initially did that under 1,000$ turbo build I ran low 14 second 1/4 miles. Not sure of the HP but Im sure it was over 250Hp at the crank all day.

 

Do you have any mods already done to it? If not, the first place to start would be headers/catback to open up your exhaust. I have a thread from a while back about porting the intake manifold if you want to stick with the stock heads/intake. Like fasteddi said, those intakes arent great though. I agree with him on the cam and head porting. You have to be careful and do your homework before porting the heads, you can do more harm than good quickly if you dont know what youre doing. Maybe some rockers too. Dont waste your money on a hypertech chip or an underdrive pulley. A hybrid 3400 topend would give you a nice bump in power too. Read up on the stickies and search, search, search. You should find more than enough info to get you there.
Also, do you have an auto or manual trans?