For the challenge you could get a set of rusty pacestter headers for prolly a little over 100 bucks. Headers really wake the vehicle up. Dont run a flowmaster cross flow muffler, they sound good but dont flow well.
Also TB Bypass is free and worth a few hp, you can also remove the air pump evap and egr stuff, being OBD I I dont know how emissions in in your area.
A tune really wakes these up, Im always told OBDI is easier to tune but all my experience is with the OBDII stuff, but if you could find a friend who has the capability to flash a tune for you, you can probably find one of the major tuners (PCMforless, Madtuner) bolt on tune file online.
Ive also seen a few do a cheapy cam swap using 80 valve springs and a used cam (cc503 cc306 or LT4 hot cam), and using the stock rockers and whatever year's pushrods that were hardened from the factory. Really the rockers are just SBC rockers so how expensive could a set of used rollers be.
A few years ago, the in thing was to take used LS rockers (1.7 roller vs LT1s 1.5 stamped steel) and drill the studs holes out and run them. People said dont do it there will be problems, the problems never seemed to surface, at least that I saw.
For an intake cut a hole in your hood or lay your radiator back and go find a cheap ass lid from an LS1 car, it will be cheaper and better than the LT1 style aftermarket cold air intakes.
There is also a 1LE a/c delete pulley, lots of weight can be pulled from these cars.
Shocks and bushings are probably shot. Bushings all around made a HUGE difference on my car. I did all Moog bushings and BJs (Upper and lower ball joints, Front UCA & LCA bushings, Rear LCAs), for a little over 200 from rock auto. Moogs rear lower control arms bushings are solid like the factory option 1LE ones for added performance but still have a little flex which is required in that position on the live axle. Many people do poly urethane and it was the rage forever but most of the race guys recommend against it.
Some also box the rear lower control arms which only costs you scrap metal.
There really arent any cheap shock options that are good, everything is E36 M3 except konis and bilsteins. I love my Konis, if I was on a budget Id probably run bilsteins and cut a coil on stock springs and remove the rear isolators for a little more drop.
A lot of the race guys lower the rear panhard bar, supposed to make a big difference.
Sways - you can get a new ST front 35mm for about 200 used a little cheaper, you may be able to find a GM 33mm 1Le bar for cheap but most recommend a 35/21 setup for a square tire setup. Dont buy a new rear sway ever, pretty much everything from 18-26mm is available used. The 3rd gen runs the same rear bar as 4th gens, so you just go to the junkyard with a micrometer and measure til you find the size you want, or be lazy like me and get on thirdgen.org, make WTB add and pay some dude 50 bucks to pull it out of his garage and ship it to you
Wheels - check craigslist and ls1tech, ltxtech reqional forums regularly and you can probably find some ZR1 replicas or OE for real cheap, there really arent a lot of options cheap but there are a lot of people that have OE replicas of vette wheels or ZR1s, SS 10 spokes, or WS6 wheels, and if you want to go retro awesome get some enkei wins or LG world challenge wheels, they have fallen from grace and are cheap but center caps are literally impossible to find and they are a complete whore to mount tires on..to the point where you will show up to pick your wheels up from the tire shop to find the guys trying to cut the tire off with a sawzall trust me. They are all 17x9 or 9.5 which is really the sweet spot for 4th gens (outside of 17x11s).
Would strongly recommend a set of subframe connectors for the safety part, they really help in a crash. Performance is controversial as some people say they help but the consensus seems to be they cover up some problems the completely E36 M3ty OE shocks produce and with good shocks they make less of a difference.
Brakes- You have 11" front brakes. You can go find some LS1 car front knuckles with calipers and everything for about 200 bucks and they bolt on and give you a 12" front rotor and with good tires and an aggressive pad they stop very well, or you buy a bracket for a little over a 100 bucks and run a corvette rotor 13" and use the LS1 caliper or a vette caliper, stops even better.
Sites
frrax.com (site dedicated to auto-x and road racing 3rd and 4th gen fbodies, lots of good techinical info)
Ls1tech.com (ls1 site that has a really good LT1 section, huge classifieds, and good subforums for suspension tuning etc)
Ltxtech.com (like a small version of LS1tech only for LT1 stuff)
foundersperformance.com (new suspension company makes a few really cheap suspension components)
PS: If it was me and I just wanted it to be fun, Id buy up used parts to do a bolt on car and then throw a used cc306 in it and pay for a mail order tune, a used nitrous kit (150-200 hit), a big stall (I think the SS3600 is the in converter but may be diff for n20 cars), some 3.73 gears, throw some 255 M/Ts on the OE factory snow flakes with some E36 M3 225s up front, and a cheap set of comp engineering rear shocks and go troll everyone by running high tens at the track.
Ive been around Fbodys for a long time and love the LT1s, if you have any questions let me know, I am probably about to sell my whole car for not much more than challenge money and if I do, I might consider selling some of aftermarket stuff off mine. I should really part it out so I can get at least some of my money back out of it, but I dont have the time.
Nothing like some pit stick to make a car smell good for sale!
