Re: The Purple Car Bilsteins and other Suspension crap+Fbody's.
I guess I can update this. It's only been a year and a half lol
I had been looking at GXP's for awhile and managed to find one only a couple miles from home. I went and looked at it and said, "used and abused, no thanks" I went in and talked to them anyway just to see how much they wanted for it. Said it needed some work and they wanted 5K the way it sat or 6K after the fixed whatever they needed to fix. Way too high. I ended up talking them down to 3200 buks on it. Fair deal I thought for having brand new Bilsteins and tires on it. About 1500 bucks worth of stuff there. So I bought it. Got the title a week later and found out it was a salvage title car. Went back and they said they'd either buy the car back or cut me a check for 400 bucks. I took the 400, so the car end up costing 2800 bucks.
As I bought it-fairly rough but not horrible. It was the cheapest GXP I could fine in a 250 mile radius and it was only 5 minutes away
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Brand new Bilsteins on it
Car was a mess inside. I don't see that I ever got any after pics but it cleaned up nice and I put Weathertec mats in it
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Found this rolled up in the rubber cover where the driver's belt bolts onto the seat, I'm sure we know what this was for...
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Engine bay was horrid when I got it. Air box was broke. Check out my sweet visegrips to hold the positive cable on the battery too, ended up replacing both battery cable ends, no pic of that either I guess. Couple cans of brake clean and a powerwasher cleaned it up really well. Ended up putting a Cold Air Inductions intake on it that I scored for stupid cheap. Over 300 dollar intake new and I paid 100 bucks for it basically brand new. I don't see that I have any pics of that either. Did plugs and wires on it. NGK TR55IX's I think is what they were, MSD wires. I don't see what the big fuss is about plugs on these. They're no harder than a 3800 car.
Anyway, only pic I have of the bay dirty
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Did some suspension work. The car already handled good for a nose heavy fwd car. I think GM did a half decent job on the handling department of these. There's always room for improvement though.
Did the Dorman 34mm bar I had been trying to sell forever, Addco 639 rear bar, new LCA's with Moog spherical bushings pressed in, Canuck drop drop springs, and also got an old Otto racing STB that I heavily massaged(AKA beat it with a hammer until it fit) to clear the alternator. New sway links for the front for the different style bar. New Moog bigger links in the rear. The car stuck hard even with the ****ty no name tires on it. It was a blast on curvy roads
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Cleaned up the front end a tad. The headlights were miserable and the turn signal were so hazed over they were worthless. So retros and new turn signal housings were put in
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Here's a shot after the front end stuff and after the Canuck's settled
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Mufflers were rusted through and car was very loud, especially in DOD mode, sounded horrible. Put on Borla Pro XS muffs, sounded perfect I thought. Quiet for everyday driving but they did come to life when you mashed it
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Other stuff I don't have pictures of are trans cooler install. Trans got over 210* with ease even on the interstate. After the cooler I never saw about 176* even beating the dog piss out of it on a windy low speed road. It usually hung around 150* even in the summer heat. Cooler was a well worthwhile investment for that car. I also found the trans had been rebuilt when I did the cooler. Found a tag on the trans haha
Had DOD turned off with HP tuners, mileage didn't change but maybe .5mpg worse. But it stopped drinking oil so who gives a ****. It would burn a quart between fill ups with DOD on.
It also had a full stereo in the car that I robbed from the purple car. Made the 5 1/4" Alpine's work up front in the 6 1/2" hole. Bought a new 5 channel JBL amp to run the whole car. Sounded good I thought.
Ummm, I had an LS1 intake setup for it I planned on putting on but never got around to it
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That's about it, was definitely a fun car for a daily but wasn't a good daily. It was stiff-my fault. But mileage wasn't that good either, it averaged 17-18 at best, maybe 15 in the winter. Found the car in the next post and then the GXP went bye bye [/FONT]
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