I have a 2004 Monte Carlo LS and I was wondering what I can do to really make a difference in adding horsepower. Should I put on a cold air intake? Or maybe a supercharger/turbocharger? I'm not sure what I should look into. What would work best?

 

Here is a link to a detailed write up on how to get more out of your LS which means you should have the 3.4 engine

https://montecarloforum.com/forum/fw...p-power-46071/

the best power adder is a turbo. Depends on how much you have in your budget and how far you want to go. A cold air intake and a few exhaust mods are relatively cheap and will give you some gains in hp, but will only get you so far. You really need to add a supercharger or turbo to get the most out of these motors. A tune of your pcm will also wake your car up and make it more fun to drive, these are relatively cheap one of the members of the forum offers a service to do this you can see his ad in the classified section of the site, and there are also tunes from ZZPerformance | 3800 Performance Parts | Largest Aftermarket Supplier! and overkill or a diablo tune, there are all good from what I've read, I personally have an overkill tune and love it, so it would come down to which you prefer

To be honest, I don't know if they even sell a turbo for a 3.4 engine, and I'm fairly certain they don't sell a supercharger for that motor either, you would first want to look into upgrading to the 3.8 motor

 

I figured I should have just went with an SS Supercharged Monte Carlo but this is a good looking car and I got a good deal on it so I couldn't say no to the offer. Thanks for the advise

 

To be straight up and honest with you, don't invest any money into making your 3400 'faster'... the money put into it won't equate to any amounts of reasonable power.

That being said, if you just want a little more noise, you can do a CAI Intake and a tune, and for about $300-400 you'll have a nice sounding car (under power) and the shift points will be raised and firmed, resulting in a longer lasting transmission and a little more driving fun.

If you're really looking to make anything over 200 whp, you need to swap the 3400 out and look into the L67, 3800 supercharged engine. Again, not the best platform to make killer power on, but much better and more reliable overall than the 3400.

 

I know a guy that had a turbo 3400 with a lot of porting and polishing and couldn't even break into 13's in the quarter mile...

But there are a lot of Grand Am guys with some pretty nasty 3400's.