Just bought a 99 regal gs with 120k miles completely stock. What do you recommend for a few hundred dollars of mods. Would like to have low 14 second potential, also curious reliability of transmission etc. I race an 87 gn and so this 99 buick will be my daily driver.
Do all the maintenance stuff...fluids, filters, plugs, wires Most run high 14's stock so it doesn't take much...you could do an air filter and a downpipe or headers. That'd get you around 14.5s, plus a little bump in MPG. Then a tune and a smaller pulley would get you easy low 14/high 13
After the maintenance, a few mods could net you low 14's easy. It won't take much. Though, our transmissions are pretty much glass. Then again, these cars have ZERO traction, so your trans should be good.
I have had decent luck with these trannys just dont do smoky burnouts ,spin around corners ,etc.. keep the abuse to all business straight forward. my wifes gs bone stock with a K&N ran 14.4 @ 96 for me and I have seen several others run similar that close to stock. my daily driver has 211,000 miles and close to 200 passes in the 13's mostly on dr's and all on original trans pb of 13.5 @104 and 13.1 @109 on spray for that car , I got it to run 13.9 on the stock pulley and the 13.5 was on a 3.5 pulley ,plog ,3" dp & catback , ported rear ,st 1 tb best spent couple hundred... probably u bend & res delete , used powerlog , 3.6 mps - in the right hands ( someone who has raced w bodies a lot) with proper track prep it would be flirting with 13.99 for a couple hundred
Thanks guys, good stuff to hear, I found zz performance website, turns out I work down the road from them. Anyways thinking of doing there stg 2 kit, which is 3.5" pulley system, thermostat, plugs, downpipe, air inake system and pcm for 600, says to expect 40hp gains, should I do that or are there cheaper and better ways?
zzp is the major vendor in the 3800 market at this point , they are a good vendor , I have bought tihngs from them in the past but prefer to buy used mods over new for bang for the buck now. They are also in the business of selling parts whereas your fellow members will tend to look out for your best interests. I do not like most vendors packages and there are some that are pretty dangerous - 3800 performance in particular... a 3.5 pulley on stock manifolds is not a good idea , some gtp's can get away with it ( you clicked on the image of a gtp on zzp's site to get to 3800 stuff , the vast majority of modded 3800's are gtp's) gtp's have dual exit exhaust with 2 restrictive mufflers vs. a regal gs's 1 restrictive muffler so even though gtp guys will say their stock catback is a restriction a regal gs is much worse. not enough exhaust to let out the extra air you are forcing in with an intake and smaller pulley causes boost stacking which generally increases detonation for $600 I would look at the ebay headers which are slp knockoffs for $300 , a homemade 4" intake with K&N cone for $70 a modular pulley system with a 3.5 or 3.6 pulley for $75 or so used and a zzp pcm for $100 unless you have someone local with a tuner thats willing - consider dropping the coin for a tuner yourself sooner rather than later
13.9 on a stock pulley.... What were your short times, and how did you achieve them? What fuel did you use? What other mods did you have with that pulley? T-stat? What was your AFR and timing? What tires were you on, and what were the ambient air temps?
my best suggestion is buy used good parts off of clubGP for the cheap. Headers, rockers (if you wanna change your Valve cover gaskets might as well get rockers and a cheap set of springs) and a pulley (intake is simple) and some tuning. leave it at that, and just be semi nice to the transmission. definitely should get you up the the 13s the cars have potential. I went 12.8 at 107 without an intercooler this year, no spray, 2.0 60'... few more details left out of course, but you get the idea.
