Wife says she wants a few mods done to the car

[usetaboost]

Is this even feasible with a daily driver? She really wants a set of coated headers on it but I havea feeling they would be troublesome on a driver. I was thinking more like a front powerlog and a U-bend delete.

 

[murphinator]

yes feasible with a daily. My 02 gs which was my daily for years I bought in 06 with 96k on it , started modding it immediately , the first 3 years I owned it I worked in Massachusetts and commuted from Maine through NH 6 days a week except when required to run company trucks for work - around 1100 miles a week , I would stop in at the track mid way home rip off some mid 13's and get 30-31 mpg on the drive home , currently 220,000 miles with no modding related failures , just keep it in this range and you will be fine , shoot for 12's on sub 1.9 60 foots and trannys are the weak link.

I also had a couple gtp's over the years one 2 door went 13.3 on headers , 3.4 pulley , 1.9 rockers ,intake , tune plus all the little stuff like colder copper core plugs , colder thermostat , good fuel filter plug wires etc... another 4 door gtp ran the same et but also had a built trans with 329 gears then I sprayed it to 12.2 @118.

start with exhaust headers preffered , then intake , then before you drop pulleys be equipped to scan/tune/wideband to do it safely. If 13's is quick enough for her then that to me is themost proven simplest way to get there , if you want to go quicker the smartest thing you could do is commit to swapping from sc to turbo but I am imagining your GN scratches that itch and the GS can just be the quicker than expected sleeper for daily use - I also have multiple LS1 f bodys for when I want to go fast in a rwd.

 

[Howling Mad]

Slap some ssac or speed daddy headers on there.

 

[usetaboost]

haven't found any for sale

 

[murphinator]

he is talking about the header brands you will find new on ebay , they are SLP knockoffs and will say made of mild steel or something like that not to get into copyright issues with slp but they are stainless headers for around 300 , upgrade the clamps and use the stock stainless manifold gaskets is what I keep reading about people doing , I have had Plog's , SLP's TOG's , and Pacesetters but never any of the speed daddy or ssac as I usually get my parts from cars I demod and have never bought a car with them but people speak very highly provided you ditch the hardware that comes with them. You could poke around on the regal forum and find out the exact clams/hardware people are buying

 

[murphinator]

http://www.regalgs.org/topic/54841-ssautochrome-problem/

link of a guy having trouble getting them containing info you may find helpful

 

[smokingunz]

I have a set of the zzp modded pacesetters that I would sell very cheap...and some other go fast stuff

 

[usetaboost]

send me a pm

 

[Darth Fiero]

Honestly there are other avenues of modding you could take besides headers that would probably give you better gains if you are starting out with a stock engine. There's nothing wrong with headers; but as a first mod, I wouldn't expect too much from them. Eliminating the U-bend behind the cat and replacing the factory exhaust flex on the downpipe with something that flows better would be the absolute first thing I would do (make sure all flexes you use do NOT have internal braiding - the high exhaust temps produced by boosted engines can melt/distort and collapse the internal braiding used on some aftermarket exhaust flexs - I've had this happen to friends' cars). The stock exhaust manifolds aren't terrible although the front cast manifold does benefit from some port and polish work.

After eliminating the stock exhaust bottlenecks, I would address the induction system and get rid of all the restrictions there and try to get as much cold air into the engine as possible. Along these lines I would upgrade to a Northstar throttle body and have the GenIII blower housing ported (both inlet and outlet) or replace it with a GenV blower. After that, I would do rockers or a cam - depending on how far you want to tear the engine apart. It is only after this I would personally consider a set of headers, because after doing all these other mods, the full potential of the headers would be realized.

Of course, the blower pulley size should match the rest of the mods and the PCM tune adjusted as well. My experience tuning these PCMs shows there is a lot of around town part throttle performance GM left on the table just in the stock transmission shift table settings. Delaying the part throttle upshifts by a bit can work wonders on how the car drives - even on a bone stock car. If you want the transmission to last leave the torque management settings stock and don't increase line pressure to a point where you're barking tires on the upshifts. (A firmer shift isn't harmful as long as it isn't too harsh/violent).

 

[murphinator]

I have to disagree with some of what darth has to say and agree with other things - its all based on personal experience so I am sure he feels his suggestions worked well for him . I try to never let my opinion get in the way of what my time slips - especially trap speeds say , I have had to adjust the mods I recommend as more info is available.

By the time you address u bend , downpipe , flex , and front manifold you have spent more effort and possibly money than going headers which will give you room to grow .

I agree to address exhaust before intake as it is the biggest restriction and will net nice gains - I was able to crack 13's at 102 on a stock pulley and full exhaust /tune definitely start there plus it makes room for all the added flow your intake mods such as smaller pulley , cam ,rockers , FWI/CAI .

My personal cars have ranged from stock manis with downpipe & u bend delete , to ported rear/front powerlog/3" downpipe with u bend delete , and multiple cars with headers on top of spending a lot of time on 3800 supercharged specific forums where it has been hashed out over and over and headers are preffered unless there is a reason why you cant go that route then plog/ported rear/3" downpipe is the way to go- headers gets you right to the point by eliminating all those restrictions in one fell swoop.

A northstar or stage 1 ported stock TB will give you a gain no doubt so I agree here but not a huge gain more of a supporting mod when starting out the gains will show up nicely as mods are added and the additional flow is needed , I would do this after exhaust/intake/tune/pulley

High ratio rockers like zzp's 1.9 modified stock rockers or cam are a very good suggestion o again agreed . Match springs and timing chains depending on what you choose 1.9 rockers with L76 springs is a popular route or xp/s1x cams by zzp/intense with appropriate spring/chain.

There has recently been much discussion on the regal forum about ported blowers and gen 5's this ones a disagree.

A ported blower is a must when adding an intercooler ( aftercooler technically) as you will need to open up the outlet of the blower and the inlet of the lower intake manifold that the heat exchanger core is located between to expose the entire core for heat transfer.

IN years of watching threads of gen 5/ported blower cars as well as watching many of my cars and friends at the track I never noticed a gain to match the price , I picked up on this and started paying attention to it after I installed a stage 4 cnc ported blower ( inlet/outlet/epoxy work) and ported lower intake from a source I wont bash but I spent $425 and at the time was racing every week that the DA was good and saw no gain (none) on my 3.4 /full exhaust/ported tb/tune car that ran 13.5 for me at the time , didn't reduce KR just reduced size of wallet ! a friend that had a gtp with similar setup running similar times to me also added a ported blower around the same time he saw no gains either and he had rockers/headers vs my plog stock rocker car , he did run 13.3 but that was the same as he did before the ported blower.

when someone installs a ported blower or gen 5 on their car and drops from a 13.5 to a 13.1 then I would say its worth the price but have never seen it happen - better places to spend your money as you begin modding , I will try to find a link on the recent discussion on this I am referring to.

 

[murphinator]

promised link on gen 3 vs gen 5 with info and charts from the manufacturer (Eaton)


http://www.regalgs.org/topic/54470-geniii-vs-genv-the-truth/

 

[usetaboost]

I never once considered a blower swap just because the car has such low miles. I have no plans on cracking the motor open either. A friend emailed me and said the speed daddy headers are back in stock and he got a set new for just over 200. If I don't come across a good deal on stuff I may get these while still available. The problem with this car is that it has such low miles on it I don't want to throw a wrench on it unless the parts are stupid cheap.

 

[murphinator]

you don't have to crack the motor open you can make great gains with bolt ons.

get those headers , a modular pulley setup with a 3.5 pulley to start with , a tune, and some drag radials and you have a solid 13 second car , mid 13's if you really have your stuff together and good weather. Its really that simple where you already understand drag racing and getting decent results from your turbo regal you will figure out how to et a bolt on w body quickly. We have several g body turbo regal owners on the w body regal forum-they figure it out really quickly and generally know what questions to ask to get results.

 

[Darth Fiero]

The point I was trying to make was if you only plan on doing 1 mod, then there are better things to spend your money on than headers. Yes, I agree that headers take care of the bottleneck problems of the stock cast front manifold and the factory downpipe's flex joint. And I do agree that if you are planning on doing other mods after headers, then headers aren't a bad idea to start with.

 

[kshef]

Very feasible and practical. I've been daily driving mine for 120,000 miles...traps 20+mph over stock with stock motor and "bolt-ons" and the only thing I've lost is 1 transmission, plan on driving it until it hits the 200K mark.

 

[usetaboost]

Waiting on smokingunz to get a final quote on all the w body stuff he has. Don't know if I'll use any of it right away. Might wait til the car is paid off but at least I'll have it.

 

[usetaboost]

GOt the car waxed up last weekend and hosed the inside and outside of rockers with some chain oil I had in the garage. FIgure something is better than nothing. Yesterday I went to the junkyard and got some stuff off a fleet impala. I've noticed these fleet cars have A LOT of inconsistencies. THe donor car I found was a 3400 car so maybe that's why some things were different. The car had a very small rear sway bar, a 32mm front bar. I grabbed the bar, the strut tower brace an hardware, tubular fender braces, caliper brackets, rotors, and the new ceramic pads that were on it. I doubt the 32mm bar will be a worthwhile upgrade but I figure for 15 bucks I'll just hang onto it for a spare.