I'm thinking of keeping my '95 SSE. It'* in pretty good shape. I just had the tranny 4T60E rebuilt and soon I'll have to repaint it. It still has the original exhaust, so, I'll have to replace the CAT and Muffler too. I know that I can rebuild the engine and gain some horsepower. I did some research and it seems that by porting and polishing the intake and exhaust chambers, replacing the piston heads and valve springs with stronger ones, I can gain power. Is this true? If so, how much power is gained? I'd like to gain another 30-50 HP. Is there a problem with the stock tranny by improving the engine?

Heads and a cam will net you 50hp. You will need to upgrade the exhaust to headers or ported manifolds.
You should upgrade the tranny with a stronger torque convertor and shift kit, a limited slip differential would be nice too.

Wow sounds fun, good luck man! In the future Im thinking of buying some stock headers and having them worked on and wrapped as well as porting my lower intake manifold.

I am in the process of doing the porting. Gonna be a fun little project . I am hoping to see 10hp [Bill said 5, so I am going with 10]. First rule for modding: Have fun going fast


-justin

I wouldn't really worry too much about portingout the heads too much.
If you remove all the carbon from them, polish the exhaust ports, deck or mill them 30 over to raise the compression, get stonger springs, the heads should be good
You should straight up have someone else just rebuild the bottom end because that'* no joke.
Get a cam (gt 1 *cough**cough*), comp cams lifters, along with the essentials, gaskets etc.
Then you can really benifit from bolt-ons such as, ported exhaust manifoldsor headers, bigger throttlebody(L67 one will work), blah blah

Ive got the same freaky combo of L36/4T60-E/ODB1*2 hybrid.

Or of you have lots of money you can get the 4.1l stroker kit...

The tranny should be fine unless you like one wheel burnouts and going WOT 24/7.
But if your trying to get a limited slip i know a couple places that offer one and i know were to get gear conversions as high as 3.73

To sum it up, it'* all about the dollars.

This statement is SO true .. I think it needs repeating

You can make a 1.1 Liter Yugo go fast if you got the money.
Or as the old saying goes .....

" Speed cost ... how fast do you want to go "

JLathem

How much are we talking about?

Well i rebuilt the top half of my engine, did exhaust, and various bolt ons for like 1500
Hopefully i'm in the mid to low 14s
I've seen it done with the same mods or less.

What'* your budget?
I can shoot ya some ideas

$12.32 I'd like a 10 sec quarter-mile.