Just curious what are some enhancements in terms of sound(like pipes),performance or longevity can y’all offer me? I need to know what can work best for a 6th gen monte to give it better power and last longer!
also what kind of air intakes and tuners would y’all recommend???

 

Exhaust.. Well, the only power gain you can get from the exhaust is deleting the "u-bend". Do a search here, plenty of posts about it. For the love of God, dont straight pipe it. Itll make it unbearably raspy and thats just not this cars character. Many aftermarket mufflers will do this also.

The best option IMO is u-bend delete, cat delete, res delete, replace res with glasspack, and thrush turbo mufflers. In addition to these things I also made a custom T-pipe to replace the stock Y-pipe and that completely eliminated the small amount of raspy resonance left over. I can tell you ive tried a shtton of different mufflers and the only ones I found acceptable were the thrush turbo. Theyre a bit on the quieter side but it seems the louder you go, the more rasp youre going to get and honestly its an embarassing sound. Lol were already FWD, we dont need anything else to be made fun of for.

CAI.. Search here what a warm air intake is and be sure you dont get one of those. Youre best off running some pipe into the fender (or behind the headlight into the front bumper like I did). Or some places sell a 3-4" rubber hose you can use instead. Main thing is to get the filter into the fender or bumper and dont let it suck up water.

Tuners.. HPtuners is popular. Havnt went down that road myself yet but that seems to be what everyone suggests. Or are you talking about just wanting to scan for data so you know whats going on with the car? For that I suggest a bluetooth dongle, tablet and the torque pro app.

Is your car supercharged?


EDIT: I wanna say also, the stock mufflers on these cars are not bad either.. If youre looking for a quick fix (just to get something done or get the feel of working on the exhaust) you can cut out the ubend, cat, and res. Replace those with a 2.5" section of pipe and see how you like it. That'll give you a little power gain along with a bit more sound.

 

As for mods, the sky's the limit with a 3800. It can be modified to make all the power you'd ever want on this platform if your wallet is big enough to keep up. So as you don't get all kinds of random suggestions, it would be helpful if you told us how much power you're after and roughly what your budget is. That'll keep people from suggesting $5k turbo kits when you've only got $500 and only want 10 more hp.

As far as tuning goes (assuming you mean DIY options), there's only two good choices that give you complete pro level access:
-DHP Powrtuner. Has been discontinued for a long time, but there's a lot of units floating around out there used. A bit picky on computer use as its pretty old software, but is completely unlocked for GM 3800 vehicles and has the aftermarket Tinytuner option to add the most number of fields available.
-HPTuners. Still sold brand new and works on a ton of different platforms. Will be far more expensive as the base module starts at $300 (or more for the PRO interface) and you've still got to buy credits for every car you want to tune. As its still on the market, it'll be the most modern looking and compatible across interfaces and laptops.


In terms of longevity, keeping up on maintenance- fluid and filter changes is a big one. Not beating on it is another good one. Depending on your location, heat can be problematic for the trans so a cooler can help.

 

well I’ve been told that when having a new intake installed that I’d also need a tuner kit to keep the car in check so basically like a tuner like a bully dog kit, and no mine isn’t supercharged it’s just a super sport. Thank you for the exhaust suggestion I just want to get a better growl to my car as it already has a good purr when speeding up but I want a little bit more oomf, I’ve looked up videos of different montes with changed up exhaust and out of the resonator, muffler, and cats changing the muffler sounded the best

 

yeah not a huge budget, I’m running off making $1000 a month and I’m constantly doing new things to the exterior and interior to spruce it up, I just want to find some kind of engine/exhaust ideas that can give it a little bit more so not something crazy like a turbo kit

 

Its not true. The MAF measures air coming in and can compensate for the tiny power gain of an aftermarket intake via fuel trim correction automatically. No need to mess with a tune.

If you want the benefits of a modified pcm, just buy a canned pcm tune from a major 3800 vendor like zzp. You tell them your mods and they send you a tweaked pcm.

My suggestion in general with the 3800 is dont go too crazy loud. Its a very raspy / odd sounding engine due to the firing order and the usual FWD exhaust layout. The louder it gets, the more apparent this sound gets and the less pleasant it is in general.

So the bad thing in general is that the NA 3800 doesn't really respond well to mods. Even some of the heads/ cam builds from back in the day struggled to even make what a stock supercharged 3800 does and some of these guys had a couple grand in their 'build' with all kinds of NA add ons.

Personally, the most I'd suggest is just a cold air intake box and whatever exhaust tweaks you'd like (both just for the sound) and just leave it at that. If you're on a very limited budget, theres no reason to waste it on mods that only give single digit hp gains.

If you absolutely had to do more, maybe a HV3, some 1.9 or ER modded stock rockers, and a canned pcm tune. But honestly the 3 of those combined is at least half the price of a top swap for a fraction of the power.

Just my .02. Theres a reason you don't see many modified NA 3800s.