My First Camaro

Hello everyone. I have been a mustang owner all of my life and always had 5.0's. I recently purchased my first camaro because I was tired of my mustangs breaking down all of the time. I just couldn't afford the maintenance. I purchased a 97 v6 and so far I love it. Not used to owning an automatic but it's still pretty fun. I was just wondering if anyone could suggest some cheap mods that I can do to her whether it be to make her look nicer or for a performance boost. I am a Chevy virgin I guess you could say so any help would be greatly appreciated!! Thanx!:confused: :confused:

It is the same for all cars, free up the exhaust and get some HP... A nice cat back and headers might net you 20HP.. Cold Air intake everyone will scream, synthetic fluids, ect..

Hey, welcome to board! like he said, go with an exhaust and CAI, whisper lid setup. that will definately wake the car up. you can probably get everything under 500 depending on the exhaust setup you want. also if you go to camarov6.com i think it is, they show a couple of free mods you can do in the meanwhile. they also show how to make your own CAI. pretty helpful. well good luck :cool:

Thanx for the info I will definitely check out that website.:bow:

Welcome, Cutie! ;)

The other site has a good modification section that breaks it down real nice. But this site has the better board...:)

You might want to make sure your car isn't leaking any oil before you put in any synthetics. Synthetics will find the little holes and cause leaks you didn't know you had.

Intake and exhaust are the first mods to consider and will really wake your car up!

Again, welcome to the board!

You can port your Tb and do a free ram air. if you have 308 gears go to 342s aleast i have 410s and love them. also go for a torque converter. they pick v6s up a bunch.

welcome to the board... funny thing was I was looking at 5.0s the other day :), kinda the reverse situation.


www.fbodyv6.com also has some good info as well.


I would do exhaust and some sort of CAI first on your car, maybe plugs and wires as well because it might have the stock set still on it.

jsut to warn you ahead of time a common misconception of former stang now 4th generation F-body owners is that Dual exhaust. 98% of Camaros and firebirds have a single I-pipe, that goes into one muffler and comes out as 2 tailpipes. Its kinda hard and costly to do a truel dual setup found on most stangs, some have done it but it is by far the minority.

good luck.

P.S.

as for what gears you have check your glove box, and look for the code GU4, or Gu6.

Gu4 = 3.08 gears
Gu6 = 3.42s

both were found on automatic f-bodies.

Wow. This has turned into quite the learning experience for me. I had no idea how different it would be switching from a stang especially a cobra to a camaro. I want to thank everyone for your awesome advice and for welcoming me to the board and plese keep it coming!

yeah its a huge huge huge difference....

those mustangs are made completely backwards... while GM made the Camaro perfect :D

Its very similar jsut a couple differences.

Well the first day I owned the car, I brought it to work, put it up on the lift, and called my local chevy dealer and had the following parts delievered the same afternoon...spark plugs, wires, pcv valve, auto tranny filter kit, ATF, fuel filter, oil filter, 10w40, anyway my point being it has had a full tune up and then some and I used all of the best stuff you can get. Now my only other thing I didn't do is I want to swtich to Mobil 1 synthetic oil so that my motor will last longer b/c it already has 91k but I was told that I have to buy a conversion kit which includes mods to my motor is this true or can I just make the switch on my next oil change???:confused:

I almost forgot the most important thing.....the K&N air filter, the one I pulled out was nasty as hell!!!

Yeah, I'd definately check out www.firebirdv6.com *same as camarov6.com * Most of the mod's and admins are from the VA Beach area. They have a kick ass car club for the V6 f-bodies.... that'd be a good chance for you to meet some other F-body people and swap some idea's :) I'm in southwest VA, too bad VB is bout a 4 1/2 hour drive for me other wise I'd make it out to some of their meetings :(


EDIT:: also I saw where you asked about a conversion kit to switch to synthetic?? I've never heard of that before. I run Mobil1 TriSynthetic in mine and have been doing so for over 2 1/2 years now. There was a noticeable difference for me after switching... everything seemed to run/rev smoother. The difference is very small but I suppose where I used to travel ~150 miles round trip a day to work and back you sort of get a feel for whats normal for your car :D

Originally posted by CamaroCutie
Wow. This has turned into quite the learning experience for me. I had no idea how different it would be switching from a stang especially a cobra to a camaro. I want to thank everyone for your awesome advice and for welcoming me to the board and plese keep it coming!
Ok, i dont care about the flames............screw a flame suit.........if your female...........which i doubt.............going from a Cobra..........to a V6Camaro?
If you want the pull and thrill like you had with the Cobra, you need a SC...........or a NX kit. Im in awe at the moment............go ahead and flame sixers........but you should know even by your "bigger 5.7 brethren" going from a V8 and asking this is kinda tar tar :confused:
And i do own both a Z and GT so, my statement stands, if u truly are that ignorant about it..............go for FI..........Nitrous or a SC(supercharger) only way you'll get the power you 'should' be used to.

Originally posted by Sephiroth
Ok, i dont care about the flames............screw a flame suit.........if your female...........which i doubt.............going from a Cobra..........to a V6Camaro?
If you want the pull and thrill like you had with the Cobra, you need a SC...........or a NX kit. Im in awe at the moment............go ahead and flame sixers........but you should know even by your "bigger 5.7 brethren" going from a V8 and asking this is kinda tar tar :confused:


Took the words out of my mouth... except for the doubting that youre female. I assume you are with a name like "camarocutie." Whyd you go from a Cobra to a V6 Camaro? :confused:

Originally posted by Sephiroth
if your female...........which i doubt.............going from a

With an IM name like gsxrncbrgirl I hope she's a chick :D

Originally posted by bigsteve7
Took the words out of my mouth... except for the doubting that youre femail. I assume you are wiht a name like "camarocutie." Whyd you go from a Cobra to a V6 Camaro? :confused:

because even a v6 camaro is a better car than a mustang
I myself passed up a good deal on a 96 5 speed gt to get my camaro

Originally posted by Wolfie
because even a v6 camaro is a better car than a mustang
I myself passed up a good deal on a 96 5 speed gt to get my camaro
:rolleyes:

Originally posted by Wolfie
because even a v6 camaro is a better car than a mustang
I myself passed up a good deal on a 96 5 speed gt to get my camaro

:rolleyes:

I'm sure the world of car enthusiest agrees with your statement.

Originally posted by bigsteve7
:rolleyes:

I'm sure the world of car enthusiest agrees with your statement.
:bow: C'mon...........we ALL know mod for mod.....a V6will own any V8.........pffffft..........pushrods......

Ok first of all let me RE-clarify a few things. Like I said previously, I have been a mustang owner all of my life and it has always been v8 5.0's. The reason I switched and got a camaro was for the reliability and because I do a lot of traveling now and needed something good on gas mileage. I have respect for any domestic muscle car whether it be made by Ford, GM etc.. I am not completely clueless when it comes to these things if you read my previous replies I did all of the right things with the right parts when I first got the car, but looking under the hood of this car is much different than looking under the hood of my cobra. And just to clarify things a little yes I am a woman and no I am not that completely clueless but I want to learn as much as I can there is no such thing as knowing too much. I apologize if I offended anyone in any way but I don't believe that I did nor do I believe that I deserved those two replies I got!! :(

Is the message board still up in camarov6.com? The rest of the site is, but...

just ignore the bad comments. either way your driving a camaro and that's that. so what if you went from a cobra to v6. no biggie.;)

Originally posted by CamaroCutie
And just to clarify things a little yes I am a woman and no I am not that completely clueless but I want to learn as much as I can there is no such thing as knowing too much. I apologize if I offended anyone in any way but I don't believe that I did nor do I believe that I deserved those two replies I got!! :(

I'm sorry if my question offended you, I was just curious as to why you "downgraded" cars speedwise. I didnt mean to imply that you were clueless or anything of that matter. Goodluck with your new car, I'm sure youll enjoy it.

Ok here is the story about why I got rid of my cobra for a v6:
When I bought my 95 cobra I was kinda stupid and didn't have it checked out by a mechanic before purchasing from an independant dealer. My ex and I were so excited to find a rio red 95 cobra with a black leather interior we didn't care. Come to find out it needed the motor rebuilt b/c it was previously a track car and used to be blown with a vortech and basically it was run the piss out of. So at 62k, I let my ex pull the motor and rebuild it. I also did a lot of body and paint work to it as well as some performance mods and about 12k later, thought it was all done. Well, as it turned out, my ex is no mechanic!!! He messed it up so bad that the car would break down twice a week on my. The dumbass even put the thermostat in backwards and even I knew how to do that correctly. It got to the point where I just could not afford to keep putting money into it to fix it and to this day the poor car still does not have half the power it used to before my ex got to it. I loved that car it was my baby but I just couldnt keep spending my entire paycheck fixing it. I still have my SVT certificate and everything b/c I miss the car so much but I am quite happy with my new little v6 and can't wait to make this one fast. I will buy another cobra again some day, but this time I will choose my mechanics a little wiser! :barf:

There have been people (on these boards) who have gone from a v8 to a v6 camaro before. This isn't the first time.
Besides it was a '95 cobra, I always get suspicious when I see the price tag lower than most V6's. I passed up a couple of '95 snakes

Welcome.

Some guys on here are a bit opinionated so you should overlook them :D At least you chose an F-body for your next car... long as you keep fluids changed and with some common sense you car will last a long long time. I bought mine early '00 with low mileage, used it as a daily driver to work and back and here it is with 92K miles already and its running even better than the day I bought it with just a few basic mod's.


Thumbs up on getting the Mystic Teal color scheme ;d as you can tell from my sig... I dig that color hah