94'1LE

Hi everyone! Just like to introduce myself. My first car was a 74' Camaro. 350 w/ 350 turbo trans. All bone stock. This was in 1992. My buddy had bought an 88' corvette with a 4+3 manual trans. I never had much fun driving a car as driving a manual!!!! We put in a 6 spd in it a couple yrs later & replaced the exhaust system without the cat. That was in 95'. We switched out my automatic trans to a Muncie 4 spd & a positive traction rear end! Had fun driving it with a manual much better. Long story short. I got hit in the rear & it buckled the quarters. Got married had kids. Now divorced. So I always admired the LT1 since it came out & how much more it would red line!!! Never had a chance to get one back then & having to raise my children. So now I come across a time in my life still being a very much Camaro enthusiasts!!! I seen this 94' 1LE Z28 Camaro with only 27,000 miles on it!!! Everything original!!! Looks Great & drives Awesome!!! LT1 w/ T56 trans! I've put a flowmaster muffler on it, K&N air filter, factory 5 star rims off a later camaro. Yes had to hone the centers out some. New radio & speakers & it has a hurst shifter that came on the car which I put a leather **** on. I kept all parts that I took off. All bolt ons. Nothing permanent. Got it Sept last yr. & just had my last emissions. I'm thinking what else I can do to it to make it faster & maybe sound better( not as if the flowmasters bad, they sound Great!). If I should cut off my cats & replace with a straight pipe??? Any bolt ons or chip & headers??? Have a few more questions but I'll do those for now. Glad & happy to be apart of this CamaroZ28 forum!!! Any tips, advise or opinions would be greatly appreciated!!!

Injuneer

Welcome to CamaroZ28.com ! Sounds like a great low mileage find.

A 1994 only has one cat. You can delete it, and it will not set a code or affect how the engine runs. Won't pick up a lot of HP, either. If you are in California you can't delete the cat. If you have tailpipe emissions, you need the cat.

Exhaust upgrades are good, but just swapping out the muffler doesn't change much. The big restriction is the crimp-bent 2.75" intermediate pipe. A full catback, with a 3" mandrel-bent pipe will provide a more significant gain. Better yet, a set of headers, and an upgraded Y-pipe. The Pacesetter long tubes are popular, and not all that expensive. A full cera-metallic coating is a good idea, to keep under hood temperatures down.

Not possible to change the "chip" in a 94 PCM. It is fixed to the board. You need a flash tune. Even with a totally stock engine, a tune can pick up 10-15 HP simply by leaning out the overly rich stock target A/F ratio in power enrichment (PE = roughly, WOT) mode. There is self-tuning software, like TunerCATS, and maybe one other. Or a mail-order tune. Good LT1 tuners are getting harder to find.

Want 6 HP free? Bypass the coolant that flows through the throttle body. Pull the hoses off both sides of the throttle body, and connect them using a 3/8" barbed hose connector and a couple clamps.

Consider a full cold air intake, rather than just the K&N in the stock box. 4.10 gears will really wake up the 6-speed cars, with minimum damage to gas mileage, due to the T56's two steep overdrive gears. 1.6X full roller rockers are a good investment.

For the ultimate improvement with a normally aspirated engine, porting the stock heads, matched stock intake and a custom cam can approach 500 HP at the flywheel. Of course requires a larger throttle body, larger injectors, and a good tune.

Things you don't want to do because the gains, if any are very small, or they cause more problems than they cure: throttle body air foil, underdrive pulleys, removing the screen from the MAF sensor, any ebay gadget that promises you 60 HP and 25% better gas mileage.

Good luck with the new ride!!!

94'1LE

Thank you for the very quick reply!!!! My K & N cold air filter goes from the throttle body & goes under the frame. I took out my air box & ran the filter from underneath. You have quite a bit of knowledge on these cars!!! I appreciate it alot. Sounds like it could cost a big chuck of change to get it more faster. I realized it would. But the long tube pace headers with a y pipe going into 3" exhaust & the 4:10 gears sounds like the way to go along with a tune. I'm just south of Atl Ga. For the time being I drive it a few times a month. Other than that it sits in my garage. They only made 135 of these 1LE's zo I'm told & researched. Maybe for the near future it would be good to build a motor with all that you mentioned. Other than a tune. Gonna do that first. Look into some headers, gears & a tune as well as by passing the coolant through the throttle body. Very informative information!!! Thank you for sharing it with me!!!! I'll be posting some pictures if it real soon.

Injuneer

I bought my 94 Formula brand new, in California. Started modifying it within a few weeks of buying it. Tried a lot of things.... found out what works and what doesn't. If it was actually true that "we learn from our mistakes"..... I'd be a genius by now.

94'1LE

Neddless to say if I'm not racing it and just enjoying it the way it is now with the mileage being low. Keep thing's simple and don't be fooled by thing's seen on ebay and so forth. For the price I got it for and how quick it is as of now. I've not gone over 9K. However I do intend to do my normal maintenance on it. As I have witnessed in the past. Any upgrades takes more upgrades to other parts of the motor and drivetrain. Learning more and more about it should be very interesting as time goes on!