I have an 86 Z-28. It's got a 305 TPI with a 700r4 tranny. When I first bought the car, I wanted to restore it back to factory...with NO mods. A couple days ago, I was cruising in my buddy's 2002 Corvette Z06. After seeing how fast they are, my plans have changed. I HAVE to make my Camaro faster! I want to put headers on it, but don't know what brand. Some ideas and links to websites would be GREAT! I also want to put Borla Cat-back exhaust on it. Different heads would also do the trick, but again, need ideas and some links too. One more mod I want to do is a bigger cam. What size would be good? I don't want a "chugging" idle though. I also want a lower read end. The 2.73s just don't cut it. I was thinking maybe 3.23 posi... Any thoughts on that? My buddy and I are pulling the tranny this weekend and rebuilding it and putting a shift kit in it. If all that doesn't do the trick, then I'll add NOS on top of that. Thanks for any help in advance!

 

you've got your work cut out for you if you want it anywhere near as fast as the zo6...

anyway.
i would first advise against spending all the cash on the borla. it's a nice system, will last forever and look good but it also costs 2x as much as a comparable system. magnaflow has aluminized pipes, polished mufler and tips, and flows fantastic. add $50 for a cutout and you basically have an identical system to the borla for about $350 less

a good inexpensive cam to look into would be the cam out of an LT1. with minimal work they are interchangeable and it will give a moderate gain on the 305. with the addition of some decent heads and maybe some good roller rockers you'd see some nice gains.

having said this...90% of guys will tell you just to drop the 305 and geet a basic 350 crate motor. they are readily available with about 330hp for i think less than $3k....and will bolt up to your tpi system no problem. just a thought.

look into the cheap/free mods for you car.

gut the air box, or build a ram air from behind the fog lights and install k&n filters, port the plastic intake Y, descreen/port the maf(highly debated), bore the tb to 52mm, port the plenum, bump the timing, add a new coil, good tune w/ plugs, wires, cap, rotor.

a good used set of 3.23's will make a noticable difference. since you say your car has 2.73's in it, that means you ahve a 2 series carrier, which means if you want to buy used gears you're pretty much stuck with 3.23's. aftermarket you could get higher...3.42's or 3.73's. but the used 3.23's are readily available from the 4th gen A4 guys who change out to higher gears.

well that should get you started on your research...good luck

 

the post above me had most of the info you needed. Personally i have 3.73 gears in my car and i love them gives a nice launch. As far as headers go you have a couple different options. The two companies i know the most about are slp and hedman. The slp's are nice because they are 4-2-1 so basically the four tubes pair off into 2 sets before all four tubes come together (check out some pics of them on www.slponline.com if you dont understand it will make sense then) therefor reducing turbulence in your headers. The hedmans are nice because they have larger collectors then most other companies so depending on how big of an exhaust you want to go with hedman might be a better choice. Hope this helps a bit

 

He can't use a roller cam in an 86.

Instead use a Crane PowerMax 260 cam. Will work great!

 

i have heddman headers on my 87 IROC and even though i installed them the same time i was doing a 350 swap,they were EASY to install. the 1ns i got are just regular black and all,but still do the same trick for less $$$.

some good links would be

[URL=http://www.jegs.com]

or

[URL=http://www.summitracing.com]

 

Do you have to pass emmissions and is it a daily driver?