A few months ago I purchased a dead stock, low milage 2005 C6 vert. Now that I'm finished with exterior and audio (two things that don't scare me), I want to focus on performance. I think it's all gonna come together in about this order:

Cat backs
Intake
Headers and Cross Pipe
Intake Manifold
Cam
Heads

Of course I'd love to be able to put this all together in one shot, but I don't have the cash now and I certainly don't have the patience to save. What I'm wondering is:
a. What exact parts would you recommend for each step? (This will be a daily driven car, need a fairly stealthy and reliable set up with a good sound)
b. When will it require a tune? (Of course it will get a full tune at the very end of it all, but at what points would you recommend a tune? I really don't want to pay for 6 tunes)
c. Where, in the greater Chicagoland area, would you recommend I have the car tuned?
d. What sort of gains can I expect from this all?

Along the way I also plan on adding Z06 brakes, a Pfadt Suspension kit, new rims and a Z06 wide body in the back.

Thanks in advanced for the advice, here are some pictures of my Corvette in it's present form, comments and constructive criticism welcome.

The paint is a custom blend of house of kolor paints to create a gorgeous black with a red metal flake base. The work was done by our good friend at http://www.classiclook.com/
The pictures simply do not do it justice, highly recommended.
The fin on the rear end is a z06 spoiler that we added along with the paint.





Thanks for looking.

 

PM sent.

 

I have a 2005 6 speed, and this is what I had done by ECS in the following order over a period of two years:
4.10 ring & pinion
NPP mufflers (2008 take-offs)
Callaway Honker CAI, American Racing headers, tune
Cam, tune
Ported FAST intake manifold, tune
Didn't touch the heads.

End result: 462 rwhp/418 rwtq, rwhp gain= 120

 

Unless you have hate stock exhaust, I'd skip the catback and use the money towards the headers. Then, I'd do the intake and headers together with a tune.

 

Thanks for the advice guys. So far it's look like it'll have a vararam intake and corsa cat backs by spring, I'll probably get a tune done as well.

 

If you really want performance skip the vararam and Corsa. Go with headers first. You will see nothing with the CAI and tune. You will feel the headers. Since you want this to be your DD be careful with your cam choice. An aggressive cam will make it a pain to drive daily in traffic. I want my car to be very streetable so I'm going with an ECS SC600 pkg by summer. I'm ordering my headers next week. I will have a full exhaust and headers at that point. I've read 100's of threads on the CAI and I am just not convinced its worth the money. I see there are very small gains but you will get gains by tuning a completely stock car. When most compaines try to show the gains they dyno the stock car then put the CAI on and a TUNE then they brag about the HP increase. Headers will get you around 30+/- HP and 35+/- TQE with the tune (thats the numbers I've been seeing). I purchased the Corsa Sport and did all my interior mods first and I wish I would've just thrown the headers on with the SC to start with.

 

The LS2 stock intake manifold is a bad design. You'd be better suited for power output by adressing that before the cat back. If you want to save some bones there are several good porters that can port it for a couple/few hundred $ to help it out some.

Or you could step up to something like a FAST or TPIS 90mm LS6, but will cost ~$800 (about as much as a cat back) unless you can find a take off 01-04 manifold for cheap and send it to TPIS for thier $350 90mm conversion.

 

Very nice paint job If you are interested in drag racing.... You might want to check out the 1/4 mile thread that is a sticky in this section. There is a list of C6's with many different combinations of performance equipment and their results. The actual list can be usually found near the end of the thread.

Please note: if your car has a maunal trans the 2005 has the weakest rear of all the C6's produced. This is something that you have to consider as you modify it.

My personal ride a 05 A4 with 3.15 gears has a complete Z06 exhaust, honker cold air intake, bilstein shocks, fast intake, tune and 2800 stall speed converter. The car with drag radials will run 11.50s all day long. In better air it will run 11.3s - 11.4s without any weight reduction.

good luck

 

It sounds like you are not trying to make max power with this being a daily driver convertable. I would do the exhaust first, then the intake, (probably skip the manifold) then the cam. A well done cam package can make good reliable power with little problems to deal with.