I think its great that youre thinking all this through before you jump in.

If I had it all over again this is what I would do.

Cam and heads along with a cast steel cranked forged piston 355 with some nice strong I beam 4340 rods. Long tube headers into a custom X dual exhaust. 200 shot of nitrous ,255 lph in tank pump. Shocks and springs, 12 bolt rear ,3500 stall into an upgraded 4l60E (later into a th 350 with a trans brake). Rims and tires for the track. Of course this is a drag oriented car.

What makes it nice is my freind just picked up a motor and tranny less car a month ago for 700$ (94 T/A), and we picked up a wrecked 93 T/A with a built motor (my old car) for 1500$. We'll see how it runs this weekend, and then the following on nitrous.
The only thing that is deviating from the above plan into my freinds new car is the 12 bolt. But after the rear end buy we'll have a good 7000 $ in the whole car !!! On the bottle we are expecting mid 10s.

My road to mid high 11s was more expensive in my 97. I probably have 15 to 18 grand in my car (paid 7500 for the car)
But I am N/A. With a small shot of notrous (100 shot) I could run a high 10 in theory.

 

If you want to go fast it is often much less expensive to buy a race car, and this is a good time of year to find a deal.

 

I took a real close look at this prior to starting on the 94 firebird. What I found and what other's already knew was that horsepower wise you'll be at $40-50 per horsepower on a fuel injected platform. Check out WS6.com, he breaks it down for ya on several mods.

 

Y'all seem to be missing the point that Rich is trying to make. You can do 12's simply by stripping the car down to it's nuts. The money comes from trying to get a quiet, comfortable street legal car with A/C and a stereo into the 12's.

 

You said it better than I could!

Rich

 

When I bought my car it ran low14s. 1LE + additional handling-suspension parts hurt its drag racing, but it had a hotcam, headers, exhuast, CAI. Obviously something wasnt right.

$35 for a LT4 knock module and 10 minutes of laptop tuning netted 12s.

~$700 into n20 kit, window switch + $300 into drag radials = 11s.

I'll post video how it does with alittle less weight and a bit more traction next weekend. If I play my cards right it should have 10s for less than 12k in it, including price of car, which made up over half that