I sent Zoomer at ZZPerformance an email back on March 26, 2006 asking him his idea of how to upgrade a Monte. I just recently found it again and wanted to post this to help newbies out. His email will be supplied in full, albeit broken up to supply my thoughts, and italicized to preserve his quotes and this should supply you with the best and safest method of upgrading. Also to save money on buying stuff you don't need, once you read this list, make a plan of where you want to go with your car. Once you have the plan, reread this list, think about it again and proceed from there.

*********GET A SCAN TOOL OR FIND SOMEONE WHO HAS ONE!!!!! ********* It doesn't matter which one, but this can't be stressed enough but before you do anything, get a scanner. Any pulley swapping you do can cause Knock Retard (KRor just knock) and you can damage your engine. Try to target 0 knock and you don't have to worry. You don't need to go gung-ho and get a DHP $400 scanner, a simple Palm LS1M for $150 or similar is fine. Making sure you don't blow up your engine is the name of the game here. Some people will say you can skip the scanner for now, but remember some cars are assembled at Friday around 5 PM while others are on Wednesday around 2. Since you don't know, play it safe and Be Prepared. Also always run 93+ octane gas.

The first and cheapest upgrade is the 3.5" pulley from ZZP, SLP, or a host of others. It costs between $50-$75 depending on quality, etc and will give your car about 20 HP increase. Bang for Buck this is the best upgrade to start with. If you don't have the scanner, go back and get that first then get this pulley, though only a small portion of people have had problems with their engines (like 2%) you don't want to be in this percentage and have a blown engine. If you plan to really mod your car, jump up and get a Modular Pulley System (MPS) to save tons of money and time as you do pulley upgrades and swaps in the future.

UPDATE! Bumpin96monte has informed me of cars with the stock 3.8" pulley reporting KR. Looking back I rememer reading this somewhere as well. Going to a 3.5" will only amplify the problem so this reinforces the necessity for the Scan Tool. I would recommend getting a Cold Air Intake or Fender Well Intake and doing the U-Bend delete prior to doing the pulley drop. You can read more about that below.

Level 1 performance stuff is a 3.4" pulley with smaller belt, colder plugs, colder Tstat, Wizair box, PCM and Ubend delete in the exhaust. This will drop you to about 14.0 in the 1/4 depending on traction (13.8-14.3). It will bring you from 240HP to ~285HP and make a large seat of the pants difference. No transmission upgrades are needed, reliability and gas mileage are not affected. To maximize the level 1 stuff, you can add a stage 1 throttle body, water pump underdrive pulley, and throttle body spacer. This would add another 10HP or so and give more consistent performance. The stage 1 throttle body improves throttle response so the 'feel' of the car is changed. If you get all the small stuff above you can run a 3.3" pulley with an aftermarket downpipe (the most cost effective way of doing this).

I think most people will agree with the above. I personally don't have a ton of cash on hand at any given time so I order pieces separately and upgrade slowly. For noticeable and safe changes, I recommend the following order:

Stage 1

Cold Air Intake (CAI) or Fender Well Intake (FWI) - actually the 2000+ Monte's have good airboxes and you could just use a K&N drop in filter, but I figure just get it out of the way. I like my Wizaired CAI from ZZP, but there are a bunch of other CAI's to consider from: SLP, K&N Air Charger, Thrasher, Motorsports Performance, etc; FWI include Speedbuilt, inten$e's, JMB Performance, or the standard homemade kit which seems to be more popular.

U-Bend Delete - Either buy one online to weld in, have a muffler shop p