1991 Caprice, help me choose.

[CaPrIcEkInG]

Well my dream car is a 91 caprice but fixed up the way i want. As of now i have a 91 caprice with a 305, its has about 190K miles on. Still runs strong, i have had little to no problems ( the only problem i had was a bad radiator) well the thing i am thinkg about is upgrading the motor i want more power, but i guess my question(s) are:

if i upgrade the motor will i need a new tranny?
will i need a new backend?
will i need new exgst system?
i want to put a 350 or 383 but i live in calf and from what i been told a 383 is very hard to get past smog test.

i am very very noobie when it comes to cars.

well i look forward to what you people have to say

thanks...

[GeneHer]

Another friend of mine owns a 93 with a high performance 350, factory installed. It's just under an Impala SS in power. He just recently had to have his tranny rebuilt, at around 160,000 miles.

The guy who did it used to build dragsters, works out of Lemont Furnace PA. Heck of a guy.

The rebuilder said, "That motor is really powerful. The tranny can barely handle the power. Sooner or later it was bound to fail". The rebuilder modified it a bit to handle the motor. Only cost my friend $2,300.

One of the consequences of the rebuild was a recoding of the ECM, some firmware upgrades. My friend got a better shifting car and added four MPG to his mileage. Can't beat that.

You probably are running through a THD 700R4. I am not sure if it can handle the torque or not. Given that my friend's Caprice had a tranny which could barely do the job, from the factory, and got less mileage than your machine has now I'd think long and hard about using the existing tranny.

As for the rear, depends upon what is in there now.

Exhaust? It's a California car, right? Don't you guys have pretty tight emissions checks?

Gene

[CaPrIcEkInG]

Originally Posted by GeneHer

Another friend of mine owns a 93 with a high performance 350, factory installed. It's just under an Impala SS in power. He just recently had to have his tranny rebuilt, at around 160,000 miles.

The guy who did it used to build dragsters, works out of Lemont Furnace PA. Heck of a guy.

The rebuilder said, "That motor is really powerful. The tranny can barely handle the power. Sooner or later it was bound to fail". The rebuilder modified it a bit to handle the motor. Only cost my friend $2,300.

One of the consequences of the rebuild was a recoding of the ECM, some firmware upgrades. My friend got a better shifting car and added four MPG to his mileage. Can't beat that.

You probably are running through a THD 700R4. I am not sure if it can handle the torque or not. Given that my friend's Caprice had a tranny which could barely do the job, from the factory, and got less mileage than your machine has now I'd think long and hard about using the existing tranny.

As for the rear, depends upon what is in there now.

Exhaust? It's a California car, right? Don't you guys have pretty tight emissions checks?

Gene

Yes i live in calf. i dont know about the back end i am not to sure. how can i tell?