After reading a bunch of posts lately and misinformation about not bothering to do your homework first and find out how heathy your engine is first before you modifying it, I am reposting my guide on how to safely upgrade your engine.

Alot of talk has been: just put on a CAI andcatback exhaust and all will be fine. Well this is a load of BS. I did this as well as added a Random Tech 3" downpipe that include a highflow exhaust and U-Bend removeal at about 35,000 miles on my engine with mainly highway miles.I just finished dropping the pulley to a 3.4 and just happen to buy an LS1M scanner just to test for KR. Anything over 4-5* is causing severe engine damage. Well I floored it from a dead stop and pulled 9*..... Yeah 9* on a semi low milage engine that everyone said was safe to do. Well I ran out and purchased a 180* T-Stat and 104 Autolite Plugs and I'm down to 7* which will still cause problems.

Now if you're willing to blow engines, be my guest and don't bother to simply scan your car to see how much damage you are doing. If you want a reliable runner, then drop the $140 or whatever it is now a purchase a simple scanner or even borrow one from someone and see if it's safe.

Do not promote that everything will be roses though if you uprade an engine when you don't know it's personallity. EG This is why doctors check you out when you have a cold and don't just recommend taking some NyQuil and having a few nights sleep. It amounts to the same thing.

 

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.

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, Intense'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 put a custom one in, or buy a kit right away with a High Flow Catalytic Converter / straitpipe and 3" downpipe.

3.4" pulley WITH Autolite 104 plugs (or similar) and 180* T-stat. You will want all three at once and it won't cost that much... about $100. Always have the supporting mods

 

o4 what im reading here si this all gose for a S/C car, I personally dont have the S/C car, wish i would have waited a extra two weeks and i would have one but it didnt work this way.
So with this said non of the pully changes are going to help me in tunning my car.
when we tell folks the first things to do for mods it is all opion not a fact of life. if you ask what we would do then we tell you what we would do.
You do not in any way have to feel obligated to do anythign that we say here.

But i can tell you ihave also talked with the guys at ZZPrefomance And they have said basiocaly the same thing as you have here.
do the scanner first and then work from there.
the montes dont suck enough air threw a stock air box for them to breath properly This is why they them selves have a after market set up on thier cars for racing also. I drive mine on the street daily and i can say i felt the diffrence in the car after i did change out the air box to what i have. Might be in my head but i know a few others that have montes and drove mine to tell me it was a completly diffrent feel while taking off.
So i guess the long and short here is do what you want with your car, If you ask someone ehre thier opion then take it how you want to weather as gold or not. but you dont have to try to insult someone for trying to help another monte owner out.
Once agian just so i know you understand this.
DO ANY MODS TO YOUR CAR THAT YOU READ HERE ON THIS FOURM OR ANYOTHER AT YOUR OWN RISK!!

 

Oh wow. Mickey, thanks for the heads up on my post and bringing it to my attention. I was writing that when I was tired.

I would like to apologize to anyone at MCF that took this as an insult. It was definately not my intention to insult anyone, like I said I was a bit tired when I posted the first one and I didn't even mention anything about pulley drops in my post and wrote it as if it affected everyones car.

Putting on a CAI and Catback exhaust will actually do wonders for the car and shouldn't affect the reliability in any noticable way. No problems there. I was more concerned about the posts that say put the CAI and Catback on and then is is PERFECTLY SAFE to put on a smaller pulley for the supercharged group. That is just simply untrue as there is too big of a chance that you can blow the engine doing that without scanning.

I agree, everytime you do make a performance mod you bring the risk on yourself. I just wanted to make sure people are educated on the proper proceedure on how to upgrade safely, or should I say more safely. NA vehicles have a lot less to worry about when doing the upgrades than SC cars do, but they also have fewer upgrades that are easy. Everyone with a supercharger just hears "put on a smaller pulley and you'll get tons of more horsepower." I'm just really concerned that it will get to the point where some new user will come on and someone will tell them that it's perfectly safe just to drop on a 2.8" pulley and not need any supporting mods.

Once again, I'm sorry to anyone at MCF that I insulted.

 

yep the key is to scan scan scan...

but looks like its time for me to throw out ideas/ plans for moding NA cars cause i have a good deal of experience with mine.

First mods:
-Cold Air Intake (FWI my fav. but others work well too)
-Exhaust (deff have that U bend pulled out. beyond the ubend i would just wait until you can do a full system)
---full system: unlike Boosted cars, NA cars need what many people incorrectly lable "backpressure" infact the real term here is exhaust scavenging! this is where one exhaust wave/pulse pulls the next to increase Torque. on NA cars up to about 275-300Hp a 2.5inch system is fine. any larger and you WILL LOOSE TQ. any smaller and you will hurt high end hp. that it why i think it is better to save and have a local shop do a full 2.5" system for you as oposed to just swaping in a high flow cat here and new mufflers there... doing it once is going to save you money.

-miscparts: (180 stat,plugs, new fuel filter, trany fluid service, possibly even synthetic oil) will all help to keep the car runing right.

for those of you who are gifted with the 3800 you have a good bit of parts avalible (cams headers, rockers, even swaping in a SC or turbo!)... for the rest of you its time to get creative

-after intake and exhaust i would move to a high flow TB

if you plan on doing a lot more mods, i would invest in a tuner cause about this time or very soon you will be pushing past the stock programing in terms of safety. also a tuner will save the the money of buying an O2 simulator, adjusting the speedo, fan temp actiavtion for runing colder Stats. if you pretty close to done... a pre burned PCM might be the better choice.

-Rockers or cam to take full advantage of the increased flow capablity you just gave the engine.

-Headers(or Ported Exhaust manifolds)if you havent alread that Full exhaust system. most headers have a 3" down pipe you will loose some Tq cause of this but short of having an exhaust shop cut your New toy... there is no way around it.

-High velocity upper intake manifold and ported lower manifold.

-Poly engine mounts make the engine more ridgid so more power gets to the ground.

-underdrive crank pulley, alt, water pump pulleys personally i dont like the idea... and i didnt see much to any gain from the crank UDP on my car.

-upgraded ignition coils are useless they have a higher rate of failure then the stock coils and the cars runing down to 9 sec 1/4's are still using stock coils... good enough for them... good enough for us.



if you have done all the above and want more.... by this point you need to have a scaner/tuner scan regularly if you want your car to remain safe... most HP and Tuning gains come from removing safety margins built into the car... at this level you may end up needing to drop to a colder spark plug to keep Knock down. its not as big an issue as with the SC cars but unchecked it can cause problems and at the very least it will lower spark timing and hurt power.

-ported heads. valve job, I/E ports, even decking the heads to increase compression
-dyno tuning again using your tuner and having live dyno time with an expert to get the most out of your car.
-custom work! you name it... time to get creative! if your staying NA you need to figure out ways of tapping more power. you prob by now have needed to switch to larger fuel injectors, 2 ranges colder spark plugs. other ideas include custom intake manifold with tuned lenght runers, custom cam shaft profiles, even larger TB's, tuned headers, if you maxed out flow of headers steping up to a 3" system

as with the SC cars

 

N/P this is what im here for it is to play devils advocate most of the time.
btu i dont like haveing to be harsh with folks so i try real hard not to be, But that is actually my personallity. im very straight forward and dont hold back.
like i tell teh wife, Dont ask the questions if you know youwont like the answers LOL
in 10 years of marrage i have yet to get the age old question. dose this make me look fat?................Well heck yes it dose!! now go spend another hour of changing in to all the clothes you own so i can watch the end of the race before we have to go LOL

 

WOW! and she lets you play with your car still... no wonder you married her.

 

yeah i hear ya LOL I lucked out on that one But im still trying to get her to let me have the NHRA on loud enough to shake the windows in the whole building So i have that true to life feeling while watching it LOL

 

what are KR level

 

KR = Knock Retard... and no im not calling you names! :-P

Knock Retard is when the computer detects detonation and the car retards ignition timing. this reduces power and the chance for engine detonation... although this is better then doing nothing and letting the car detonate, the system still waits until the engine begins to detonate before taking action to prevent it.... (kinda like sewing your sleve and just waiting until the needle goes into your arm before you stop!) yeah you didnt gush blood, but you still pricked yourself! same thing with KR if the car has a tendency to Knock even if KR stops the KR from getting worse, it still is causing damage.