Few Random Questions

[.Holdon.]

hey, playing around with ideas for my 5L and have a couple of queries. overall the engines feels sluggish at first but when it gets to high revs well it obviously goes alright. looking to wake the engine up a bit to make it more fun to drive in the low and med revs. with a couple of things i am wondering at what amount of power will i need to upgrade parts.

how good is the stock spark system? when should i upgrade it?

same with the fuel system and injectors.

what is a good camshaft to wake the motor up? e.g a common camshaft that is is usually upgraded to first. good med and high rev.

diff gears; from memory i have 3.09:1's. have read 3.55's and 3.7's are a common upgrade; what would you recomend? are the 3.55's a good first step for a mostly stock 5L and are the 3.7's for a more worked car? what are the benifits of both?

exhaust; have cat back twin 2.5" or 2.1/4". what size headers are good to start with? then at what point will i need to get anything larger.

with a 355ci stroker kit it has a 10.5/10.1 compression ratio. if i was to supercharge the motor would i be best off reducing the compression ratio to allow for more boost or keep the compression ratio and reducing the boost; which way is better?

[Boonz]

with the stroker, 10:1 is still ok to run about 7-8 psi
you can run more if you build the motor with forged pistons and multi layered steel headgaskets and a good set of valves and valve springs.

yoiu have to decide things like that before you build the motor, work out what you want the motor built for becaus a N/A motor will not respond well to having boost run thru it
same as a forced induction motor wont run well without boost

[VrWagz1]

If you just wanna make it a bit more responsive to get it up and running. Get a set of decent extractors fitted and a cat back(i went 3" for mine), you can feel it open up a bit even just after doing that and grab youself a mail order tune and you shold pickup another 20-30kw and a bit more torque.

Diff gears would be great to give it a bit more poke down low. I'de do mine but i cant justify it for the amount of highway driving i do.

[v8_bomberdore]

from what ive been reading becuase my car feels the same , but your timing chain could be streached, ive put a timing light on my car and its 10deg at idel, if the timing chain was streached would it still read 10deg or would it be different

[.Holdon.]

these are the first few things i'm after
exhaust
roller rockers
355 stroker kit w/cam that suits it
diff gears and a tune are the first things on my mind.

at this stage what are the best diff gears to suit this setup.

[AirStrike]

these are the first few things i'm after
exhaust
roller rockers
355 stroker kit w/cam that suits it
diff gears and a tune are the first things on my mind.

at this stage what are the best diff gears to suit this setup.

To suit that setup the factory 3.07:1 gears would suit it the best.

[sir355]

I think mate you need to decide what you really want, first you wanted to waken your stock 5L up, now you are talking about stroker kits etc, both circumstances will require different items. How much $$$ have you got, are you doing the stroker straight away.

For the stock 5L -

Extractors and free flowing cats and either single 2.5 or twin 2/14 ( hsv ) these will still be good for a strong stroker combo. I'm running the majority of the standard hsv exhaust and you can pick them up cheap, k&n filter and cold air intake, crane h272 I think its the grp A replacement, and advanve the timing a bit, it will be good for 200+ kw. And won't kill your bank balance. Its your diff gears that are making it really sluggish, go for 3.45, easy to find and not very expensive. If you still want to go the 355 i'll post later!!
good luck, i hope this helped

[stocky]

edit - nevermind

[.Holdon.]

alright, after a bit of thought the path i want to go first is a 355 stroker kit. if i was to do this, what other upgrades would i need to make it work? and yeah any bit of info helps, cheers

[savage1987]

from what ive been reading becuase my car feels the same , but your timing chain could be streached, ive put a timing light on my car and its 10deg at idel, if the timing chain was streached would it still read 10deg or would it be different

lol why did you put a timing light on it if you don't know how to read it anyway.......?

I don't know what a timing light is for.... so I'm absolutely no help there unfortunately.

5Ls respond well to basic mods. Stock as a rock they are slow as hell. As has been said, a decent exhaust, a HSV CAI or similar and a greenfoam tune will have them kicking along nicely.. until then they are hardly worth calling a V8 at all haha

Avoid timing chain stretch: USE GEARS

[savage1987]

alright, after a bit of thought the path i want to go first is a 355 stroker kit.

I hope you're made of money.. learn more about stuff before building a stroker.

[Morton]

A timing light displays the current spark advance the motor is running. You plug the light into the Cylinder 1 spark lead + plug, and it flashes every time Cylinder 1 fires.

This instant of fire can then be matched up from a white chalk mark on the timing notch on the crank pulley, against the timing marks on the timing cover.

[sir355]

i would say look in the classifieds and find a hsv motor complete, there is one on ebay fairly cheap. Will save you alot of mucking around then change the cam and do some head work, because if you persist with your 5L you have to buy in jectors the crank get the block machined, the heads machined to fit double valve springs etc etc etc.