The completely stock version of this car is rated at 325 HP and 350 TQ. With the SLP dual/dual exhaust, it gets a 10 HP bump to 335. Since you can never have too much of a good thing, I decided to up the power a little. Like many, my first performance mod was the addition of a new airlid. It smooths out the air flow and delivers more air to the intake than the stock piece.

Here are before and after pictures

Doesn't it look much better without those dusty, ugly, plastic baffles on the side?

When I was changing the lid, I also did the Free Ram Air mod. If you've never heard of that, it involves cutting out the bottom of the plastic airbox under the filter, as well as part of the radiator support housing. The idea behind it is that it allows more air from the underside of the car to get into the airbox and ultimately the intake, giving you more power.

My next mod was making and installing an oil catch can for the PCV line. Basically, it catches the oil from the PCV system that would otherwise be sent back into the intake and gum up the engine. It takes less than half an hour to install, and the parts cost around $25-$30, well worth the peace of mind it gives you.

This is how much oil was collected by the catch can after only about 500 miles of driving. It's kind of hard to tell from the picture, but there's around 1 ounce of oil in the can. This normally would have been put back into the intake to gum up the engine. After thousands of miles of driving, you can imagine how much oil this thing will filter out.

The next mod I did was the hatch mod. This fixes the problem many Camaro owners have with their rear hatch not popping up correctly (espeically in cold weather). All you have to do is unscrew the right rear panel, peel back the carpeting covering the back of the hatch, and replace the small, weak hatch spring with a stronger one. I used a 2 1/2 by 5/8 extension spring. Now my hatch pops up perfectly every time.

I also installed a skip shift eliminator. It gets rid of the annoying skip shift feature that GM put into the LS1 V8 engines to help them get better gas milage at the expense of power. I now have full control over all 6 of my gears at any speed (as any true manual transmission car should have).

Following that, the throttle body was ported. The before picture shows the stock throttle body with its thick side walls and front metal shaft. Both obstruct air flow to the engine, robbing HP.

In the after picture you can see that the front shaft was completely removed and the sides were ground down to be razor thin. Also, the bump stop on the side of the throttle body was ground down a bit to allow the throttle blade to open at a full 90 degrees.

Next, I installed a short shifter in place of the stock one. The stock Hurst handle is 8.5" long and had too far to travel between the gears. I felt like I was driving a big rig instead of a sports car.

The new handle is only 6" long and has a MUCH shorter distance to go between gears. With this new shifter installed, it feels like I'm driving a totally different car now.

Before

After

The last performance mod done to the car was the addition of the Super Sucker Ram Air system. It's a 2 piece design that functions as a normal cold air induction system at low speeds, but becomes a true ram air system at high speeds. It's installed underneath the airbox, in front of the radiator, and connects directly to the underside of the front bumper. Unfortunately, it required drilling into the underside of the car to attach the bottom half, but I guess some sacrifices must be made in order to get more power.

I also bought (but haven't installed yet) the Fernco smooth bellows. It's a replacement to the restrictive accordion style bellows that came with the car. It smooths out the airflow to the engine, which should give the car an extra few HP.

PAGE 1: Introduction
PAGE 2: Performance Mods
PAGE 3: Appearance Mods