bjw

My son and I just bought a base model 2000 Camaro with the 3800 engine in it. I believe that everything is stock. We bought the car with the intention to fix the minor body damage and make it look good. But, we also don't want a car that is all show and no go. The engine has 112,000+ miles on it and, although it shows it's age, it still runs quite well. I am wondering if a swap or a rebuild would be the best way to go on a budget? What would be a good engine to swap into the car without too much of a headache? Or, if we just did a rebuild, what are some upgrades that we could do to increase our performance?

Evolution223

To make it run good put a new cat converter on it and new spark plugs, clean the MAF sensor and replace any of the oxygen sensors that need replaced. Just get a basic Walker converter from an auto parts store for about $150.

Really that's the best bang for the buck for your performance. You lucked out with buying a 2000 because that year GM started putting bigger upgraded headers on. You could still put aftermarket headers on but there's almost no point performance wise.

Another effective mod would be to put more agressive gears in the rear end.

A cold air intake would give you a little noticable differene and you can get those really cheap on ebay now.

If you really want to swap engines the obvisous choice would be to upgrade to an LS1 v8. put ofcourse it would be logical to just have bought a LS1 car in the first place.


Any other money you want to spend on it I would put it in the stereo, update the head unit to one with modern technology like blue tooth and all that, maybe put a sub in it.

Evolution223

check it out, you might even find these cheaper than this..0

Chevy Camaro Firebird 3 8 3 8L V6 Cold Air Intake 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 | eBay

the ones for the 95-97 cars are relly cheap, but not sure why they dont fit the newer cars.

bjw

Thanks for the info. Here is what we are kicking around so far....

New Flowmaster cat converter and cat back exhaust system (80 series).
New custom cold air intake.
MSD or Accel ignition system.
Possibly new injectors.
Possibly new gears in rear end (3.73 or 4.11).
Possibly new performance chip.

What do you think?

transamtom

There are better exhausts than the Chokemaster,Magnaflow being one of them.

CAI yes

MSD wires yes,accel or msd coils no.

No need to upgrade the injectors yet.

3.73's would be a good choice.

These computers need to be flashed there are no performance chips.

You can buy software and a cable and use a laptop to do it yourself.

Evolution223

I had a flowmaster cat-back system on my 2000 3.8 and honeslty I didnt like it much and I had a wreck which damaged th exhaust and ended up going back to a stock system. it sounded raspy anywhere above 3,000 rpm, but it did sound good at start-up and small reving. Maybe if you put headers & a cam in it would sound better but I would go the cheap option and get a cut-out, that way you can easily switch back to the stock exhaust whenever you want.

a cam may be a nice simple upgrade as well., i dont know much about that stuff, You'll have to search some old threads to see if it's worth it or not to do ingition and all that.

the best performance upgrades I did was the strut tower brace and slotted brake rotors.

The nice thing is you should be able to get a lot of this stuff really cheap since it's last generation.