What to do?

Hey I have had my 1995 z28 hardtop auto for about a month and I want to start modifying it. What are the first things I should do? I was thinking of cold air intake and catback in the near future. Price is important as i am a poor college student if I wasnt i would just buy the GMMG resonator exhaust for $700 and I wouldnt be here asking. so price and quality plus the effectiveness of the mods are important Are the edelbrock cat backs any good? As far as sound and HP. Should I just replace the muffler?THANKS!

find some LT1 long tubes from someone on the board ... brand new Magnaflow cat back on ebay is 300 and find ur self a cold air intake. that whould be a good start
u could find some long tubes with a y pipe for 300ish

Cold air intake, cat-back, headers and y pipe, even some free mods help too, save some money and get used parts off the board

If your looking for a good sounding exhaust and you're dirt poor, Buy a cutout, they are $25 + shipping and most exhaust shops will charge $20 ~ 25 to weld it up.

You can get a Cutout and a the Quick time Electric opener for like $150.

I would be willing to put a cutout on a stock exhaust up aginst ANY catback for bang for the buck in value on power, sound, & owner satisfaction. :bow:

For a cat-back thats cheap and sounds great, get a Hooker. If you want good bang for buck spray it or get some 3.73 gears.

Edelbrock is about the same price as Hooker in the summit catalog, and less common IMO. If you've got the cash I would do headers w/ y-pipe at the same time so it will all be new. An intake would be good also. After that you can take your own path, you can do gears, suspension mods, heads and cam, power adders, weight reduction, rims & tires, etc. :)

if you are on a serious budget, i second the cutout. for the $50 total or so it is hard to beat for sound and hp gains. you won't gain quite as much as it you put it on a 3" catback, but darn close.

honestly a cutout on a stock exhaust is probably about the same hp gain as putting on a standard 3" catback...10-12hp.

beyond that you should look into the cold air induction. should be able to finid them used for cheaper, or just cough up the $175-200 for a good new unit. if you wanted to go the cheaper route, there are several guys running home made CAI that are quite effective, look good, and cost only a few bucks in parts from the hardware store and then the cost of the filter. but stay away from the custom kits off ebay...most are crap.

other inexpensive mods to do are the throttle body bypass and 160deg thermostat, combined worth 3-5hp. not sure if emissions are a problem, but you can have an offroad pipe put in place of your cat.

you could also look into having a basic tune done by somebody like Ion aka Madwolf (www.madz28.com) or brian at www.pcmforless.com , both of which offer inexpensive OBD1 tunes to maximize fuel/spark, cooling fan temps, shift points and firmness, and other things. for something like $80 he'll program everything and typically sees 10-15hp from the tune.