[bigsquirrel]

Originally Posted by Fiftydriver

I would say without question, the very best money spent for under $500 would be to get an SCT tuner and have Ted Jannetty get you one of his custom engine and trans tunes for your car.

I put LTs, CAI, high flow cats, full custom exhaust and all made a difference you could feel but the custom tune from JRE was by far the most significant difference.

Now, this may have been because I have an L99 and the trans tune made a huge difference.

For the money, I would start there. Plus, its moldable with any future upgrades you get so its not something you will outgrow ever with mods.

May not be sexy but I personally believe it would make the most difference to how your car performs.

Remember though that add ons are at their best when used together. The CAI will increase the air flow your car has access to but without LTs, HF cats and good exhaust the engine may not be able to take advantage of the increase in air without the other parts. Plus, even if you get all those add ons, you will not get the most out of them unless you get a tune so that your engine is tweaked specifically for those parts.

In my opinion, $400 is a good start but to make a real difference, you will need to mod ahead and behind the engine to get the best results of the mods and also a good tune.

Warrantee is the main issue with most as far as getting serious performance increases with mods. You simply have a hard time getting good results while maintaining your warrantee. For me it was an easy choice, took about a month to void pretty much every bit of my powertrain and drivetrain warrantee.

Would do the same thing again unless perhaps I stepped up to the ZL1 but even then it would be REALLY hard not to mod it and get crazy performance.

Agreed, get a tune. Part of that money is a licence fee, as you add mods later getting updates will cost less. While mail in is a good option if you live far from a good tuner, its no replacement for a dyno tune.