I'm trying to figure out if there are any mods I could do to improve hp/torque without tearing into the guts of the engine (heads/cam) or going super charged or nitrous.
Here's my current setup:
Vararam with Power Duct; Ported TB; LG Street Headers, X-pipe, high flow cats, TI cat backs with by-pass mod, Dyno tuned by Charlie Williams @ RPM Motors--Santa Clarita CA: 357 rwhp 367 rwtq.
Since I have an LS6 intake (stock on my '01 from what I read here), would a bigger TB do anything without changing the stock heads/cam?
Anything else I'm missing?
Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

 

You can change the rear end gear. It won't give you any extra HP/TQ, but the car will benefit. An underdrive pulley will help too, but I think it is a lot of work to install one on its own.

 

FAST 90mm intake with LS2 90mm throttle body and retune

 

No a bigger TB won't work because your intake opening is 78MM. You are at the stage where heads/cam is the next logical path as those are your bottle necks now. You could do a fast intake, but you will only pick up 5-10 hp max with stock heads/cam.

Gears are mainly swapped for specific events, such as maximizing launch capabilities and trap RPM in drag racing or lowering gears so you stay in your power band longer in road racing.

On the street, while gears will make your car "feel" faster (the sensation of the revs climbing faster), in reality you are not actually going faster.

In the 1/4 mile, however, they make a huge difference in launching and possibly trap speed as you will be in a better part of your powerband as you cross the traps.

 

Guys,
I put in 410s a year ago---definitly the biggest SOTP mod!
Sure wish I could find another easy/non-invasive power mod!

 

No they put in rear gears for the exact reasons I mentioned. Feeling like you are going faster does not translate into actually going faster.

You are basically just dropping gears...3rd becomes 2nd, 2nd becomes 1st. 1st becomes mega launch gear, hence why people use them for a big boost in 1/4 mile ET. Of course there is a SOTP difference. How much faster does 2nd gear feel vs 3rd with 3.42s?

People typically pick up 2 to 3 tenths because their 60' time drops, not because they are accelerating faster. This is why their trap speed is just about identical before/after gears. If you truly picked up acceleration anywhere but the launch, your MPH would go up as well but it doesn't. That means, on the street from a roll, there really is no advantage unless the other driver happens to be out of their powerband when you honk it off or you happen to be going to a predetermined speed where the 4.10s would put you at an advantage. The same can be said of the 3.42s as they will have certain advantages as certain speeds over the 4.10s.

Here is an engineer explaining why gears aren't all they are cracked up to be for a street only car. It is, at minimum, a $1500 mod and unless you are a drag racer, completely not worth it in an M6. Why do you think people retiring their cars from drag racing trade their gears back to 3.42s? Yeah you redline 2nd much faster but you are only going 60 mph vs 78 now, of course it got to redline faster.

http://www.ls1gto.com/forums/showpos...1&postcount=21

http://www.ls1gto.com/forums/showpos...8&postcount=27

 

Anyway, to get this thread back on track... OP your next best step is to go head/cam.

How about some pictures of your ride to get us back in the Vette mood?

 

Deleted, I don't want to continue hijacking the OPs thread.

Good info on gears and how they actually work can be found here.

http://www.ls1gto.com/forums/showthr...=353176&page=4

 

Wanted to correct myself, i mixed one thing up. The rear end ratio refers to the number of turn the driveshaft makes vs one wheel revolution. 3.42 gear means the driveshaft turns 3.42 time for the wheel to turn once. Hence the higher rpm at the same speed

 

Thanks for trying to get this back to power ideas......
Every time I do heads, cam and valve job I end up burning oil and doing a complete rebuild in a few thousand miles. At least that's what happened with my '65 & '72. This time, I'll wait 'till I need the rebuild-around 300,000 miles, right? Only 220,000 miles to go....
Here's my ride--always puts me in the mood:

 

Nice ride. Things have changed these days though. The only time I burned oil was because of a bad valve seal. Once that was fixed, it never burned oil again.

 

I think as far as "cheap" or "easy" mods, I think youve pretty much covered it. If you need more power, its time for heads and cam,and a Fast intake would help in the hp/tq factor since this particular intake works best when cam/head work has been done. your probably looking at a couple grand.

 

The car looks great! I think you should just leave it be for awhile. If you really need more power maybe get a nitrous setup so you can spray it when you really feel the need for speed. That'd be a lot cheaper than head/cam.

 

I guess since I know nothing about these spray systems this really hadn't ocurred to me; and I like the idea of extra power only when I NEED it---thanks for the suggestion Turbo!
Time for me to start searching the threads!