Greetings all! I, as this particular thread denotes, am a new subscribing member to the Monte Carlo Forum. I've taken the past couple days to view and search some of the more recent postings and feel very informed.

A bit of history of myself: I grew up in small-town Iowa, and was "willed" a 1977 Monte Carlo from my father. I grew up tinkering with engines including my go-cart's Briggs&Stratton, my Rupp's Tecumseh, a mid 1940's John Deere hit-and-miss engine, an even earlier Maytag and more. When I first got my hands on the Monte's 350 V8, I was nearly cross-eyed with happiness. The shining crest on the vinyl-clad dash winked at me each time I drove it, and I was hooked on GM for sure, but was not entirely sure that I would be able to be faithful to the Monte Carlo model forever.

In the mean time, I had begun to learn the basics of engine tuning. I taught myself the ins and outs of tuning on the Q-Jet, and went to every salvage yard within 30 miles to collect secondary metering rods, primary jets, and hangers. At this same time, fate smiled upon me.

My mother graduated high-school in 1973 and, born to a rather priveleged family (think oil wells and the such), her father bought her a made-to-order 1974 Pontiac Firebird Esprit. It rolled off the line with a Pontiac 350, 2bbl carb, 3.08 rear, vinyl seats and even an 8-track. She drove it all through her college days, and even two years after I was born (1986). It was parked and covered for many years, until I got old and curiou enough to lift the cover. From there, I developed into a drag racing addict. Modifying and learning Pontiac V8's became my life. I made friends with a man who owned a 5-axis CNC machine and began learning how to use Autodesk Inventor to make brackets and the such for my Pontiac. Unfortunately, the need to pay for my unrelated Biology/Agronomy Double Degree came around and the Pontiac went under the cover again.

When my Monte decided to sigh it's last exhaust (I suppose a high-school lead foot was responsible) I was a bit more sensible and a bit more broke. I moved onto an '88 Cutlass Ciera with the 2.5L 151ci Iron Duke based engine. Needless to say, I felt lacking in the displacement department. But for the mileage advantage, I drove it up until about a week ago. It had less than 100K on it, and things were wearing out because of age and not wear. After a string of chasing down SES light codes and replacing sensless valves and sensors, I decided it was probably time to detach myself from the Olds.

I got on Autotrader and began searching for things in my price range (or what I thought was my price range) and found a dismal display of vehicles. 4-dr, 4-cyl Grand Ams, Mid 90's Luminas, and high-mileage imports. Against my new-wife's wishes, I adjusted Autotrader's high-prices above what we needed. Up popped a 2002 Monte Carlo SS. It was elderly-driven with 63K, and I figured it was a safe buy. During high-school I had started my own auto detailing busines, and though I was a bit over-critical of the paint, I could be happy with it for the price.

I signed the papers and brought home a rather roughly detailed 2002 Monte Carlo SS. It was well optioned, with nearly everything besides the heated seats and sun roof. The power was crazy, compared to the 98hp that the Olds put out and the mileage was right up there as well. I spent all of yesterday detailing it and have concluded that I am a very happy owner of a 5th gen Monte.

After perusing this forum, I am happy to have found it. I am most interested in improving horsepower/torque while at the same time improving mileage. Because this will be a daily driver, I am not interested in any power-adders that will not improve efficiency or at least keep it the same. You can throw all the fuel pumps, nitrous, SCs and such as you want, but streetability goes right out the window. With my goals in mind, I am fully

 

welcome to the forum. Glad to see another from Iowa. To help your car out I would say a good exhaust, intake and maybe a programmed pcm. All keep it very stretable and should hurt milage if not help it.

 

 

Thanks for the input TrickRacin. The upgrades you mention all make perfect sense to me, but it is the question of how to quantify these that confuses me. I know that if I swap a set of factory cast iron exhaust manifolds for stepped headers and 2.5" dual exhaust on my Firebird, I can see a pretty good performance increase without worrying about much other than routing the exhaust. With my Monte though, the need to be concerned with an O2 sensor, catalytic converters and sound management (I don't want an annoyingly loud exhaust on my daily-driver), makes it seem like a lot more thought needs to be put into a modification like this.

Additionally, trying to put a value on the amount of power increase from a something like a PCM is difficult for me as well, probably because I'm not entirely sure what is being altered with such an item.

Does anyone have any suggestions as far as where I could do a bit of reading to understand the mechanics of these new-fangled fuel injected vehicles? I think that once I have a better handle on how everything interacts, I could make better decisions on what kind of parts to look at. Thanks guys.

 

Hey SpaceRider! I'm glad that you enjoyed my rather lengthy post. Hopefully I will get some pictures of it here soon, and I'll do my best to get them loaded up. I'm sure that I'll be on this more than I should (sorry boss), and it will be nice to keep up with what's going on. Thanks.

-Adrian

 

[align=center]Hey Adrian, Check out the below MCF Link[/align][align=center][/align][align=center]How Things Work Under The Hood[/align][align=center]Click on below link[/align][align=center][:-][/align][align=center]https://montecarloforum.com/m_48863/tm.htm[/align][align=center][/align][align=center]Good Luck,[/align][align=center]`Space[/align]

 

Welcome, if you have any questions, Space is our resident "research-meister."

When he gets stumped, he comes to me (LOL)![sm=joke.gif][sm=joke.gif][sm=joke.gif]

(Ithen turn to Mrrench or Hyperfox or RJ.)

 

Good to know there's so many knowledgable people around. I've spent most of my Labor Day weekend combing the forum for general info. My vehicle didn't come with an Owner's Manual, but I've got one on order from the dealership. That will probably answer some of my questions regarding the Homelink and other programming issues. Thanks.

-Adrian

 

Adrian;
Well first of all welcome! Glad to see another happy Monte Carlo owner!

You're absolutely correct on worrying about the exhaust tuning with the O2 sensors and such, I myself have been dealing with some advanced exhaust tuning questions lately, in regards to my 2006 3.9l v6 with the Variable Intake. You can only imagine how much more complicated the equation gets when you mix in an engine tuned for two different hp/tq curves!

My advice is not to worry about the O2 sensor. When you change the exhaust, as long as you keep it similar to stock, you should not need to do anything more complicated than installing the exhaust.
By keeping it similar I mean you have to have a cat, if you have a post-cat sensor. So you can certainly go to the high-performance headers and such, as long as they do not require you to eliminate some form of a catalytic converter, you'll be fine. A further note, if you're going to be working on the exhaust, a high flow cat will help, and a new O2 sensor will also help that engine keep itself tuned properly.

A pcm, while it will not be required, is not going to hurt your ride. Usually with these modules you can tell it which fuel you are running, so that the car will be tuned properly for that fuel. Most likely your car will run better, perform better, and will likely see slightly better mileage. Intake is the same way. With a higher performance intake your car will have to work less for it's intake charge, meaning it willfree up more horsepower. As long as you're not changing the quality of filtering, going to a forced induction,or eliminating any sensors, your car will be happy to see the change.

I will let you know that exhaust changes can help a car perform better, and willrarely seriously effect engine performance. But I do want to comment that the easier flowing an exhaust is, the higher the torque range is. In other words, a exhaust that flows TOO well (yes, there is such a thing for fuel injected daily drivers) will move your peak torqe number to an RPM that your car will likely not see. So while better headers will not hurt, especially if they're the same size can only help. Larger headers will hardly have an effect, and actually (in addition to a hefty gash in the funds) could possibly reduce your peak torque. If I were you I would stick to eliminating the "u-bend" that you will find talked about quite often on this forum, a high flow cat converter, better mufflers, and a new O2 sensor.

You may wonder why, but my very first car (96 beretta w/2.2l I-4) gained probably 5 HP and 3 MPG simply by replacing both O2 Sensors. They were reading incorrectly, and my engine wasn't properly managing itself. It was not throwing any codes, nor were their significant symptoms, I just replaced it after noticing it was covered with heavy build up, and the proof was in the pudding. After leaving the battery unhooked for a spell (to make the PCM 'forget' it's past tuning numbers) and letting it properly re-learn, it was running like a charm.

I apologize if this comes as no surprise, I just wanted to give you a heads-up, since you seem to be more familiar with working on carbeurated engines.

 

Thanks for the response FlynhghR. I really appreciate your post. You're dead on with saying that I'm more familiar with carbureted engines, and I feel like a fish out of water in this more modern day scene. I have a good grasp on a lot of the mechanical aspects of vehicles, but putting this knowledge into application with computer-controlled vehicles is what is puzzling. And as you mentioned, I'm sure your confusion is even greater with your vehicle.

It seems like a lot of this stuff, probably because of my ignorance, is by-guess and by-golly. I mean, how am I supposed to know if my O2 sensors are reading incorrectly other than pulling it and visually inspecting it every once in awhile? I can't even sniff the exhaust to check for a rich condition or the comparable after all the EGR and cat converter and such. I've read about using voltmeters to check sensors and such for proper operation, and even using software to take advantage of the sensor information and recalibrate fuel/air maps, but I haven't found a good soure to learn how to go about this kind of tuning.

I really appreciate the info on the exhaust. I peeked under my vehicle today tracking down a leak, and was somewhat forelorn by seeing how tight things were. I suppose there's quite a bit more packed under the hoods in these vehicles, so I'll have to forget that there was nearly 3ft between the front bumper and the water pump on my '77 Monte. I've also heard about having too free-flowing exhaust. I think that headers are probably more than my daily driver needs, but a bolt-on or simple weld-in system could be a feasible option. I also admit, that I'd like to keep things pretty quiet. Having a "sleeper" would be my ultimate goal, and an overly-aggressive exhaust note won't help me much on that.

Anyway, I really appreciate your input, and you've pointed me down the right path for a bit more research. Thanks again.

-Adrian