New to modification, need your help!
 

Hey everyone,

Last Spring I became the proud owner of a blue 1996 Z28. We bought it used for around $5000, and though the car has over 150k miles on it, it has been taken care of very well over the years. It definitely needs some minor body work on hinges and the like, and recently I had to get a new compressor and right-front wheel assembly, but other than that it has been running beautifully. I am not much of a car maintainance buff, but I have the full repair manual for the car as well as all the correct tools and I am ready to learn.

My question to you all is: what modifications or tweaks could I make that are relatively do-able for a newcomer and would improve gas mileage, performance, and the like? Also, if you have any specific maintainance tips or recommendations, I'm open to those as well. I'd like to spend less than $1000 in total, if at all possible.

Thank you in advance for your help!

A couple basic mods to begin with would be a cold air intake system and a good catback exhaust. The intake should run around 200 bucks and a cheaper, decent catback around 300.

Than remove the coolant from the throttle body. Costs "0" and picks up 6 HP. Then consider a mail-order PCM tune. Generally good for 10-15 HP on a totally stock engine.

Is your car an automatic (A4) or manual (M6)? Automatics came with either 2.73 or 3.23 rear gears, so a new ring & pinion might help, as would a higher stall on the converter.

Thanks for the quick replies!

It's an automatic, sorry I forgot to mention that up front. Do you have any specific suggestions for brand/model of exhaust system? Where is the best place to buy and which brands should I avoid/favor?

exhaust is pretty much a matter of preference. the only exhaust i would stay away from is flowmaster as their catback does not flow real well. go to ls1sounds.com they have about every catback and sound clips of some of them on LT1 cars. fyi a lot of people seem to like magnaflow, or if you want as loud as possible go with a loudmouth or better yet a true dual system.