Hey all-

I previously had a fox coupe 5.0 mustang I built from stock with aftermarket heads, cam, intake, supercharger, tune, and built rear end. It was insanely fast but it seemed like a ticking time bomb to me with a new leak here, rattle there, deafeningly loud exhaust, and eventually its rawness and lack of handling and brakes wore on me.

Then I bought my 03 z06 which is practically automotive perfection in bone stock form... but.... I miss messing with the mustang. I feel everything I would do to the corvette would detract from its well engineered and balanced platform. I have NT-05 tires now and while they are a big improvement over the old supercars I don't think they could handle that much more power.

So should I put a set of STS turbos or a blower on, the associated injectors, tune, and fuel pump modifications, then clutch, RPM transmission, rear, and halfshafts and rollbar, SFI damper, scattershield, etc drive exclusively on street and track with drag radials and run somewhere in the 10s in the 1/4- but still worry about the factory LS6 handling the stress- I guess I could instead build an LS7 clone but my engine only has 23K miles on it and is in perfect condition...

OR buy another solid axle project car to play with and leave the vette alone with higher resale (if I ever were to sell it) and less headaches.

Thanks for your opinions!

 

If you want you save money, sale your car and search for the right modded C5 They are so many fine Corvettes for sale that might fit your needs for pennies on the dollars spent
One on the forum right now TR 01 z with a stroke Ls2 with a procharger
85k spent for 34k Its a no brainer
Just my 2 cents

Bobby

 

Personally I wont buy a modded car for a few reasons. You don't know if they were done right and you mod them for one reason. So by the time a modded car is for sale who really knows what your getting. Just my opinion. I know I don't baby my modded car.
When you do it yourself you get a sense of satisfaction as well as having the way you want it not settling for what someone else did and again who knows if they did it right.

If you want to add all those things then do it right the first time and forge the bottom end. Then you have no worries about it. Your looking at roughly 3200 to go forged with your block.

 

If you want a drag car, I would have just stuck with a Stang or a Camaro. Solid axle, cheap and cheap to mod. You can make a C5 fast in the 1/4 but you'll always spend way more $$ and/or break way more stuff and still not go as fast as you could have.

Or just take it easy with the Z06 and just do the standard heads/cam setup and boltons and run 400-450rwhp and enjoy it.

Dope

 

You already know you are going to mod it :P Your self descriptions tells us you are already infected with the modding virus

 

So your problem is that you miss the tinkering.... well you hit the nail on the head by saying your Z is almost perfection. As you know anyone can be the biggest dog.. all it takes is the deepest pockets. As a C5 design engineer,( Retired now ) I can tell you that I have had many many Private messages from members who wish they could just bring their car back to stock over the last ten years here... Modding can be fun ( as you know ) but with the mods come a certain amouint of grief. I also have a dozen or so member who thank me for their 300,000 and one 400,000 mile C5 with out having a single issue with the motor. I think if you want to tinker, buy a project car..and keep in mind that its hard to top perfection.. There are always some safe mods you can do with the Z, naturally all cosmetic mods are grief free... I guess the big question is how deep do you want to dig into your pockets and how much grief are you willing to take.
Good Luck with whatever you do.. there are many member here to help you down the path you choose. The biggest thing I can tell you is " becareful who you listen too here", there are way more people here with bad information, or willing to get you as deep as they are, than there are good solid knowledgable people.
Bill aka ET

 

I would suggest to start off slow with basic bolt ons like headers, CAI, catback exhaust. Then if you feel you want a little more go to a Cam and Intake, then Heads etc.. that way you don't just dive right in and possibly regret going so far so fast. That's just my $.02.

 

To all due respect to one of the C5 engineers, they designed a wonderful car, and thanks,but......really all the glitches that showed up, and could have been fixed at the factory, but, "no, there's no problems" must have been the mantra at Bowling Green. Hell, some of the issues, like leaking axles even continue to this day!
Enough of the soapbox. To the OP, all I can say is, the C5 is about the easiest car to extract better performance, that's ever been made. I say go ahead and start modding. It's realitively easy to get to about 430 RWHP. Above that, it gets more expensive, but you can do it in stages.

 

Like you, I like tinkering with my car and can't afford and have no where to put a second car. I have now done heads and cam twice on my car and enjoyed it both times. Even with the additional power, the car is very pampered and is not raced

One thing that always concerned me having been around in the 60's was losing the original stock parts, including the block. That is one reason that I did my mods conservatively as I didn't want to do any major damage that could cause the loss of original parts for any reason, including the block. All of the original parts are carefully preserved and packed away. A lot don't think the originality will be an issue in 30 years but I think it will.

 

you bought a corvette to have fun with it. mod as much as your heart desires IMO. if you could have more fun with the car by modding it, then there is no reason you shouldnt.

 

Mod it and have fun!! just be careful because it's addictive...

 

Let's face it's in your blood. POWER.
You are not going to be happy with a stock vette.
Make it your vette the kind of vette you really want.

 

I've had my share of cars that start out "street", then I get bitten by the mod bug and go "street/strip", and pretty soon they wind up more "strip" than "street", and the fun of driving around town is gone. I enjoy my C5Z and it's reliability with just minor bolt-ons to improve upon what the GM engineers designed.

 

To be honest, I think you should keep the car stock or only bolt-ons. A head and cam package is the farthest I would go, and nothing 'extreme' with that either. As you say, the C5 is an incredible machine, and it's great as it is. Once you start changing too many things, you lose what made it special in the first place and it's difficult to find it again. If you want a drag strip beast, buy a Camaro or a Mustang, and keep it as a strip-only car, so you can mod to your heart's content but maintain a fun, drivable C5 for sunny afternoon enjoyment.

My 2 cents.