Heffling

Recently I purchased an '04 silver GT, and I love my ride. However, I'm wanting to upgrade it in a few months (once I have saved up some cash...darn bills). What I'm thinking of doing is:

K&N Cold Air Intake
BBK Long Headers
X-Pipe
Flowmaster Cat-Back
Tune

Are these mods I can do myself? (I'm thinking mostly about the headers)

Also, should I consider doing anything else at the same time, such as a larger throttle body or upgrading the cam?

Down the road I wanna put a supercharger, but that's a few years away.

Heffling

ben790450

I wouldnt suggest doing the headers yourself unless you have a good amount of tech experience. They are extremely difficult, especially long tubes. Large TB is good but you need to upgrade the upper intake as well with it. You can get a 75mm kit (Throttle body and upper intake) from professional products for around $200. I suggest doing gears though if you want more band for your buck. For all out acceleration with moderate gas mileage get 4.10's. For really good acceleration and alright gas mileage get 3.73's. For the best of both worlds get 3.90's.

ben790450

One thing to remember one flowmasters too is that they have a lot of rusting issues. Thats what ive heard. IDK i had a flowmaster 40 series 3" dual muffler on my truck for two years with custom bent pipes and i took that thing through mud and water and snow and it never showed one sign of rust but ppl say they rust easy so idk.

Heffling

Thanks, Ben. This is my only vehicle, and I drive between 50-60 miles a day, so I don't wanna kill my mpg by upgrading the gears. I just want to get more out of my car.

What about upgrading the cam? If I'm gonna have someone work on my vehicle for me, should I get that done also? Keep in mind I wanna supercharge it later.

Also, should I install a new MAF?

Heffling

ben790450

IMO (in my opinion) a MAF is a waste of money unless you're flowing a lot of air. Wait for the supercharger to do that. You should also wait to get ur cams then too. Then you can get a nice set of blower cams that are meant for a supercharged motor. Cams are about $600 a pair. Comp cams is my fav. They custom ground a cam for my 400 rwhp, 500 rwtq beast of a truck but everyone has their own opinion. Im just a huge fan of custom ground cams because youll make about twice the HP as an out of the box cam that way.

ben790450

Also installing 3.73's wont really hurt gas mileage at all. Maybe -1mpg or less on the highway.

ben790450

Well i have full bolt ons and the most power ive seen so far out of anything (besides going to 4.10's) is the LT headers. The 75mm setup was a nice little boost and it really helped on the top end because those 2v's cant breath up there. My buddy has an 03 auto and he did the whole professional products setup (75 mm throttle body, 75 mm upper intake, typhoon manifold) and he made 25ish more hp on the dyno. Not too bad at all if you ask me.

Heffling

So, if I go for gears, should I go for 3.73 or all out for 4.1's? From reading around, it seems it will run the engine a bit higher rpm to do 70, but will it really be that noticeable, or only like 200rpm difference?

Heffling

ben790450

You notice a big difference with 4.10's all in all. Rpms, shifting and mpg. Not a good highway DD gear