Hi guys,

I just finished redoing my C4 cosmetically, and now I am moving to the engine bay. I thought about punching it out to 383, but decided that one day I may want to return the car to 100% stock. I am thinking about a heads & cam package. What should I be looking for? What kind of gains should I expect?

Maybe this will help, my car is a 1994 LT1 that my father bought new. I have 95K miles on it and it has not been a daily driver for the couple of years that I have owned it. It runs VERY strong, and the car has never been abused.My goal is to get as close to 400hp as possible and not have to fear our LS1 bretheren!

Any help/advice is greatly appreciated! Thanks everyone, and yes us young guys save the wave! :cheers:

 

Welcome to the Forum!

Tell us about your car! whats the estimated amount you feel comfortable putting in it, and are yopu capable of doing the work yourself. need more infor to direct you down the right path. I don't fear the C5's or LS1 camaros, or the new 2002 ZO6, had one the other day at jacksonville running way behind my times and not even close to my MPH. I started off feeling the same way you did about the newer camaros and T/A's beating up on me, and then i decided to do whats in my signature. So if you have 10k to throw at it and are having someone else do your mods, ask for a reputable shop in the New Orleans area. but to build a base performance package your going to need to know your budget and also what is already done to your car so we know where to start! opting to do your own work where possible will leave much more money left over for more goodies. and you can turn that 10k mark into a 2-3 k mark quite simply. so let us know what your situation is and from there we will recalibrate our thinking and money spending technique! lol, by the way, does anyone else out there like spending other peoples money much better then their own (laughing) but i know, i already spent mine, now i have to let my piggy bank fatten up before i play some more.

tell us some more and we'll see what kind of ideas we can help you come up with!

chris :cheers:


[Modified by lcvette, 9:26 AM 10/25/2001]


[Modified by lcvette, 9:32 AM 10/25/2001]

 

With that many miles on the motor I would recommend a total rebuild instead of just heads and a cam. A buddy of mine started doing an LT4 conversion on his 89K mile Z28 and ended up building a 355 because his motor was pretty worn out.

Scott Chab

 

well its a case by case basis on the mileage. if they have had mobil one from the factory as mine did, and im sure this 94 in question has since its been owned by the father and I am assuming now the son, they don't wear!!1 point blank, my cylinder walls still had the cross hatch from the final block prep in bowling green, and the only ridge i had was carbon that i was able to wipe of the cylinder edge with a rag and carb cleaner. the cylinders mic'd out in perfect round still and showed no taper between measurements. so this fella probably knows what oil has been used and if they layed out the extra few bucks per oil change to keep running the mobil. i'm sure he is probably going to find the same thing. again, let us know and we can start to plan from there! :lol:
oh mine has 106,000 miles on it, everything inside my motor looked NEW! and measured well within tolerance, and i know for a fact the car was beaten and not babied its long mile life! so for those out there with high mileage vettes, power to ya, that new synthetic oil is a miracle worker!

chris


[Modified by lcvette, 9:43 AM 10/25/2001]

 

Thanks for the replies guys! My budget is somewhat restricted (I'm a student, but I don't mind spending the money to get what I want the first time). Some friends and I are going to do the work.

I have thought about a rebuild, and I guess I will cross that bridge when I get to it, thanks for that advice.

My car is a Polo Green/Black A4 coupe, The only "mod" that I have on it is a flowmaster stainless steel exhaust. I have spent the last two years pulling the car apart and replacing parts. I have changed all of the worn-out interior pieces, weather stripping, etc... I had the car stripped to the bare and shaved smooth then repainted the same color with PPG & Clearcoat (it is unbelievable!) and I also traded up to the Black Grandsport wheels. As soon as I can get my hands on a digital camera, I will try to post a picture with my sig.

Icvette, how much power are you putting out? I would LOVE to get to your level!

Thanks again guys! :chevy

 

Sorry, more info:

Yes I am the son of the original owner...the car has been "Mobile 1'd" since birth, and has NEVER been down a drag strip or autocrossed. My father used it as a commuter (6 miles one way) in rural Louisiana (He even admitted he was afraid to floor it and hold the throttle down !!!)...The rest of the miles were highway miles to the Casino!!!!! Other than that, it shifts like a Cadillac, and I am willing to bet that the Engine is in A1 condition...

Thanks again, :cool:

 

You will definatly need gears on top of the other stuff. 3.54 or 3.73's as well as an upgrade to a Dana44 if you are planing heads and cam or else you will blow out the rear.

 

well, i don't know what kind of power yet, but im scheduled for the dyno on the 3rd, a week from saturday. we have had several speculations on the number im putting down ranging from 350 at the wheels to 410. just not sure, the MPH is quite high and the slow ET's are due to my stock gears which are being swapped for 4.10's this monday. after that and the 315 BFG drag radials, i expect to be consistently in the 11's. inckluding everything on my car, i think i have about 3300 in it including all exhaust work and parts, i do all my own labor so i save there and i ported my own heads which was fairly easy, just time consuming. if you do heads and cam, your definately gonna wanna go with at least a 2800 stall and 3.73's, the dana 44 is a wise upgrade as well. with that you'll need a drive shaft from a 6 speed and a torque arm, and a few other odds and ends to make the swap, a few guys on here who have done it will be able to tell you more! just sit down and put everyhting on paper and keep prices next to it and add them up as you go, things you cannot do yourself and need to send out, call and get prices for the labor costs, then add it all up and see if its within your budget, if not start detracting parts or save longer until you have it all, thats what i did, and i can't complain, and once you know what you want just shop for the best prices to get the total cost as low as you can!

good luck and write me if you have anymore questions!

chris :cheers:

 

He and I will be doing the work. with some other help( he will be my golfer. go for this and go for that)
:D :D :D :D :D :D
btw myles aka (ibdoinit) when ae you coming down hereso I can get my hands on that car :cheers:


[Modified by 77classic, 10:07 PM 10/25/2001]

 

ibdoinit,
Give me a ring. We can give you everything that you are looking for and more!!! :)

 

Hey 77classic,

You are just mad because everyone knows the green ones are faster! :lol:

 

:cheers: :cheers: :cheers: :cheers: welcome to the forum :jester

 

lcvette,

How difficult is it to port and polish the heads on you're own? What tools are need to do this?

Trey

 

Trey,
In the head porting arena, I'd be VERY leery about doing it yourself. Even experienced head shops can decrease the horsepower on a motor by doing just some minor thing to the heads. This is especially true when you are working behind the valves pocket porting and unshrouding the valves.

I've personally seen a head that lost 5 CFM of flow due to the guy porting the head going a little too deep behind the valve. They had to weld it back up and redo the head. This is exactly the reason that some of these shops have CNC machines on the shop floor. Once they get the right combination to work, they can EXACTLY duplicate it in every single port in the head. You are paying for the R&D work, since most of them probably went through 20-30 different combinations to get it right, hand-porting a cylinder then flowing it and duplicating it to put on an engine to dyno/race test it. Lots of man-hours goes into it.

For those who have done it themselves and got it to work, they were either lucky or a natural. I won't do my own. You get what you pay for (most of the time) and where you can really save money is in the labor. Do as much as you can yourself, and pay the professionals for their expertice.

 

I have to agree with Joe to a degree, i did so much research on mine before i started that when i blinked my eyes i would get flashes of what the bowls should look like! so, if you know what your aiming for, and have read and done your research and have a steady hand, its doable, i wasn't greedy, i wasn't trying to open anything up significantly, i used a polishing approach, and only removed what was blatantly in the way of a smooth flow, i did not cut deep into the bowls or really do much at all to the combustion chambers. just polished them and cc'ed them to match, remove sharp edges to fight detonation. for the bowls, they are already for the most part not bad, i just reduce the size of the valve guide boss and polished it to a mirror finish as well as the ports and port matching, i did have my machinist open the valve throats up to flow more but i had read enough to know this would not cause a big problem, i still have stock size valves in there, the 1.94's! bigger is not better and will sometimes cause worse flow characteristics, but if the heads from GM are already doing a nice job, removing obvious blockages will not kill your flow. but again, make sure you read and know what your doing, these horror stories usually come from someone who grabs a grinder and is searching for 200 hp out of their head work, or tuners who radically experiment trying to find a few more ponies, my port work is considered minor, but will in essence improve your performance, if your looking for a radical setup then no, what i did will not support the flow of some of the big cams, so i agree to let the experienced professionals hanfdle anything bigger then minor work where you start changing the characteristic of the combustion chambers and doing radical bowl work, they have learned how to make these configurations work. as where we would be in the R&D level and that can be a bad thing, but dollar for dollar, if you take your stocker heads and port them and slide a hot cam in and it works, awesome you saved a ton of money if you do this and you don't get the gains you were hoping for then your out 300 bucks, i decided to take the gamble and try my hand at it, once i started and realized how far i felt going with it, i knew i made the right choice. so yes be leery, if your affraid, get some junk heads and try it, if you feel comfortable with it, go to town, if not, send them out, either way you going to spend time or money on them it just a matter of whats worth more to you, i like learning so this was not only productive for my cause but very fun! best of luck and i wish you luck in whichever route you take!

chris :cheers: :yesnod: