Have a 2002 stock c5

I like how it has decent pull across the rpm range.
It feels like it should be faster though... mainly 0 to 60, so torque I guess, also with increase pull across the rpm range if possible

Did some google searching and people say adding cold air intake and a heads/cam package would put it at or above z06 numbers...

What do you guys think?
And anybody with prices would be great to hear from to to know what I'd be looking at.

 

What's your use case? What're your goals?

 

Its a daily driver
and I live out in the country...
Lot of county roads around.

Im not trying to track it or anything
I guess Im looking for more of the throw you back in the seat sort of thing.
Wanted to ask people more knowledgeable than me about this stuff for advice.

Other option is to just keep it as is, sell it down the road and upgrade to a newer model, maybe a z06, or look at other cars, and come back to corvette once the c8s have taken the depreciation hit.

 

I have similar interests as you. It seems a good start is a cold air intake, long tube headers, rear-end gear change, and a tune. I think it starts getting much deeper in the pocketbook after that.

 

It always seems to turn into an arms race. Once you get started you're constantly adding on more and more. If you can keep your head on straight and just do the things that will pick up some horsepower and torque without making the car into a race car, you can get away fairly inexpensive and have some pretty serious gains.

Each time you go through a set of mods you need to get a tune. If you don't want to spend for multiple Tunes which by the way can be expensive, then you need to bite the bullet and do everything once and get it over with. If you can do your own tuning, then it's not so bad and you just do what you want and re tune each time.

The other big question is are you going to do the work or do you expect to pay somebody else to do everything?

Being realistic a cam swap would be around $2,000. That's with you doing the work and enough supporting parts to make it work correctly. Don't go too big and you will still have a super strong running car without losing drivability.

You're asking some seriously generalized questions with almost no information to go on. Pick a budget. Decide what you're willing to go through and what your end result would be ideally. Set aside some money for a cost overrun and get started.

 

Got it.

Makes complete sense to me to line up all the mods, buy them all at once, install all at once, then tune and enjoy.

Would not be doing the work myself, so yeah, labor costs would be part of the bottom line.

Generality of my questions is probably due to my ignorance of all of this sort of stuff...

It goes 0 to 60 in maybe 5.2 secs right now
So...
Cheapest way to get that to 4.5 secs?

As far as budget...
Id say $2500

The way I view it is I could sell it for 10
If I throw 2500 into it, have fun for a little while with it, Im really just adding 2500 to the price on the next car I get...
So just exploring the idea to see if the bang for the buck on that 2500 would be a big enough bang, or if Id be better off just leaving it stock and waiting until Im ready to buy the next car

 

Paying a shop to do the wrenching is terribly expensive. I'm the wrong guy to ask there because I do virtually everything myself. I realize that's not an option for everyone. In my honest opinion, if it was me I would simply save my money and get myself into a different car. Advice like that is just me spouting off what would work for my own situation. In my life I have very very seldom ever paid for someone to do stuff for me and the reason is I simply can't see spending that money with no end result. No tangible gain.

I also think you are highly mistaken if you think adding $2,500 in mods to your car will increase the value even $1. They truly will not add anything to the value. In a lot of cases they will actually detract.

I don't mean to sound like a buzzkill, but you're going to have $2,000 labor in that $2,000 cam swap. Doing It With Buddies for a couple cases of beer or stuff like that, that's how you want to go. Have fun with it. Don't go broke with it.

 

Huh. Automatic? Because a stock C5 should be a fair bit faster than 5.2 to 60 if it's a 6-speed.

 

I hear you.

Oh no - Im viewing it like I can maybe get 10 for it now... If I drop 2500 in, then Id be netting 7500 if I could sell it for 10 still...
So itd be like adding 2500 to the cost of the next car in my view.

As far as working on it myself -
I respect you guys who have the skills to work on cars like that.
I can do the amateur stuff, but when it gets into bigger things that could take me days... And it comes down to how much can I make in a day doing something Im good at vs spending a day hopefully not screwing up my car... and probably yelling expletives multiple times per hour haha

Alright. Well thanks for the advice. Maybe ought to wait.

 

Yep its an auto

I got it for ~ 20% below its blue book back when I bought it so I got over that pretty fast

 

If it's your daily driver that you need to get to work then that's altogether different. But then, I have broken a transmission in my car in the past, limped at home in 4th gear and got it into the garage. Went to bed because I was tired, got up at 5:30 a.m. and swapped in a new transmission before I made it to work at 8. But those were the good old days!

If you can find somebody who's relatively knowledgeable and can help, it's just nice to have a second set of hands and some emotional support. No job on the car is all that hard, they just involve more bolts on the more involved projects. You accumulate the tools that you need as you go along. Start off with smaller projects and tackle the bigger ones as you go.

I have a little Parable that I throw at people when they talk about having someone to do a job for them. You know the first time that person did that job, they had never done it before.

 

Sounds like you want more snap for small bucks. Since it's an A4, change the rear end gears for the biggest bang for your buck as well as big time 0 - 60 time drops!