2005 Monte Carlo SS
Scope of project:
Initial mod budget – about $3,500

The car is driven about 400 miles / week on 2 lane roads. Snappy acceleration to pass has had it’s advantages.

1. fuel economy while highway driving: First and foremost I do not wish to hinder fuel economy; I would prefer that this stays the same if I have a light foot, or possibly increases slightly.

2. reliability – I dive in conditions ranging from -30 F to 115F (winter / summer) I don’t want to re-build my block every 30K miles & the car needs to continue to be able to start / run in these winter / summer conditions…

3. More Horsepower & getting better ET’s in the ¼. If the above 2 items can be maintained, the sky is the limit here; I would be happy with a low 13 second car, but dropping in the high 12’s would be awesome!

My questions
1. Do I have reasonable expectations, or am I smoking something that the rest of you would like?
2. I have read https://montecarloforum.com/forum/he...n-3800s-10942/ and many other posts on this form. There appears to be lots of mods / lots of suggestions. What do you experts recommend?
3. There seem to be “too many” choices in chips, air filters, inter coolers, headers… etc etc. has anyone posted specific mods, along with milage & ET times???

(on a side note I have a 66 LeMans / GTO that I converted a 502 Gm crate engine / for 8 inch, custom trany, etc etc… it runs pump gas and does 12.0X runs…) unfortunately this beast only gets about 8 MPG which makes it very impractical for a daily driver… ;-)
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- Lost and confused on the 3.8 …

 

Im gonna assume ur Supercharged? I would put a k&n CAI. 180 tstat. Ngk spark plugs. Speed daddy headers. X-p hot cam. Intercooler. Ported blower. Gen v swap wit 3.2 pulley. 12s for sure

 

You're kinda right... Only the gas mileage thing - good luck unless you want to swap your PCM settings to an economy one, in which case performance would suffer...

I'd go XP cam, ported heads, the same headers mentioned, gasket matched LIM, ported blower, ported TB, tune, and whatever pulley it could run without detonating... Probably a 3.2" DD and a 2.9"/3.0" with racing gas for the track... Autolite 103's, probably need some larger injectors. I'd run a 180 tstat when it's hot weather, but when it gets freezing, put the stocker back in. Might even get fancy and get a WizAir CAI. ZZP, Wbodystore, and the classifieds are your friends This setup would be a low 13 second pass, maybe a highhh 12 second pass. If you go with an intercooler also... You would be WELL into the 12's then.

If you're not supercharged, go turbo.

 

X2 on ported heads forgot those lol also shaved pistons

 

lol, what? on a $3500 total budget?

 

Oops forgot we had a budget haha

 

Port the stock heads, not buy them from a vendor... A set of heads from any 3800 vendor costs what, twice what an intercooler setup does? lol

 

thanks for all the replies looks like I have some serious research to do...

best price I could find on K&N CAI was $150 but they are out of stock
K&N 57-3045 Fuel Injection Performance Kit Gen2

next best was $200
K&N 57-3045 Performance Intake Kit

Anyone found a better price?

 

I will be selling mine soon.. Comes with a fancy Plexiglass lid that I made



Feel free to send me a msg if you're interested.

 

Just a quick update; inter cooler installed, XP hot cam installed, CAI, larger injectors, colder plugs, a Cat delete & Me updating the PCM to reflect higher shift points, removing torq reduction... etc.

I tried running a 3.0 pulley on 91 octane and was seeing some KR at Wide open throttle; I went up to a 3.1 and now on some runs I see 0 KR and others I have recorded a max of 1.5 KR

I'm assuming a little higher octane fuel might allow me to drop the pulley size? Can anyone confirm this?

Was planning on heading to the local strip for a street legal / tune day next weekend. I know I'll have poor 60' times as I haven't picked up any drag radials yet. (I also haven't done any tranny work, so maybe that should be done before the drag radials get added...)