I am new to the Chevy world. I have owned Jeeps and decided i was tired of the bumpy ride and the fact that i am going to be spending 3 winters in Chicago wasnt a turn on with a soft top.
I just purchased a used '97 Chevy Z71. And i love it. What i need help with is upgrades. I am wondering what would be the best performance upgrades that can do to the engine. i am trying to keep each upgrade under $300 for now. i have a wife that swears i cannot leave anything alone. hehe. I have a few upgrades in mind but want to see what everyone else out there does to there trucks.
Thanks for the help.

man I realy couldnt telll you what to do. engine bolt ones arent worth crud and tearing that thing down and rebuilding is gona take lots of work money and time.

but since your wanting to do something Id recomend a good flowing singe 3" exhaust from the catalytic converter back, and maybe good set of headers. other than that your probly wastn your money.

intake and exhaust are a good start. i like a single 3" exhaust. for intake, don't buy an airraid or other overpriced intake system. i say make your own, but, if you wanna blow money, then, that's your deal [img]images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]

what else do you want to do with your truck? umm, oh yeah, a good thing to add would be an auxillary tranny cooler. might as well start helping it now.

Three things:
Fix what you've got now. IE: replace old parts with quality ones like the spark plugs. My cousin's old body style 99 has a crappy air intake system. Fix it whether you buy something or build something.
Exhaust. Cat-back systems are gay. They do nothing but "improve" sound. Headers and a good pair of catalytic converters.
Cam. Single best improvement you'll find for performance. It's not that bad of a job and the best bang for your buck.

Single 3" exhaust is always good. And you may want to upgrade your intake. A lot of people say they don't make a difference, but mine sure did, even if it wasn't by any means phenomenal. And of course, a mild cam would make a world of difference but will be the most costly and time consuming. Don't bother with computer chips, they don't do much.

My 3" system didn't turn out gay and is actually quieter than stock. It is deeper but has made a noticeable difference in power and slight MPG gain. Headers are nice and a good way to start a whole exhaust system. If it snows where you are you may want to look into some snow tires.

Exhaust is a nice upgrade even though it wont really improve performance much. I had a 97 with a 350 and hacked off the factory muffler and put a spintec in its place. i was pretty happy with it. I also like dynomax but beings you have true duals into a muffler and a single out you either need that kinda muffler or 2 mufflers and 2 tails. If you do a serch on spintech and me I have wrote about em quite a bit in the past. I personally dont like flowmaster.

About the only thing that will yield much noticable performance is a cam. You might save up a few $$$ and do a more aggresive cam upgrade and have old ed wright or others burn you a custom chip to work with the cam. The regular chips arnt worth much IMO.

The basic bolt ons type stuff aint going to gain you much. About the only things that allow you to bolt on or plug in and get noticable gains is in the deisels. Gassers require actual mods to get much outa. A cam is a fairly easy deal though and not too costly. IMO call up ultradyne and try to talk to harold(the owner) and tell him what you have and what you want it to do and what you can live with and tell him to recomend soemthing and to give you all the specs so you can give those to a chip tuner. Make the peices work together. Then headers might be a good step(I assume you already have a muffler or cat back or total system by now).

JMO

Welcome BTW [img]images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]