I want to make my Grand Am faster, what do I do? FAQ.

[Rich]

i know tejohnson swapped the GT tranny in his SE. or just the gears or something. anyway, you could probably send him a PM and get his thoughts.

[gectek]

well its not just the final drives that you can swap out, but the 4t40 has the 3.05 and the 4t45 has the 3.29, there has been much discussion on this, be with every single car i have tracked down for my tranny buildup, all the 4t40s had the 3.05 and the 4t45 had the 3.29, now swap in the diff chain drives and you can get 3.63 and 3.91, too much for the 3400 IMO because it has the low end power, you need a taller gear to help accelerate through the rest of the track. the lower gears will run at a higher rpm at a given speed, being a little better for boost if you wanna spool faster, and they dont take any more power AFAIK to churn them than the other ones. i can top out my 3rd gear at about 130 (on the clock havent looked at scan tool yet) and thats with the 3.29, with the 3.05 there it should be a little higher, if you want quarter mile perf, but dont want to sacrifice gearing or MPG, then look at my post on the higher stall converters...better than changing the whole FDR or even the chain drive, and easy enough to mix and match, especially for spooling on the line with the higher stalls

[Grand_am_power]

I thought about putting jet engines or an warp engine on my car.

[harvester45]

Gectec: Is 130 at redline in 3rd with the GT FDR, or is that just where your car hits the wall? Cause I can get 140 out of 3rd with the SE tranny, but the car just hangs around 5,750 RPM (with raised shift points, I have a decent amount of headroom, and would like to use it).

[gectek]

well 130 is almost 6k in third, it doesnt hit the wall anymore with my dhp pcm 1.0 so far, but i havent taken it up to above that, i have the powertuner now so ill see what that does, but yah when i used to switch to OD(4th) i would actually lose speed and it would hit the wall at 120 forever and not get any faster, but that was with the stock PCM. I dont wanna take it over that right now cuz it has 171k miles on the clock and im rebuilding a race tranny right now, so ill see what it does when i get that in in the last of jan first of feb

[atc3434]

Stock the SE might actually go fast, because it can stay in third longer, where it makes better power. I think third in an SE will do like 140+mph at 6000rpm. The GT will go into OD sooner, and then stop accelerating.

[gectek]

well the se has a diff final drive than the gt, 305 to 329 on the gt, but the se still doesnt have enough power stock to run 140 anyway, so there isnt any point in going that fast any though

[atc3434]

Originally Posted by gectek

well the se has a diff final drive than the gt, 305 to 329 on the gt, but the se still doesnt have enough power stock to run 140 anyway, so there isnt any point in going that fast any though

Stock for stock the cars make the same amt of power. I'm not sure either car stock can do 140, but I would think the GT would have more top speed, until it hits OD, then the SE would keep pulling. I know having the 3.08's has let me pull past 135 in my SE with its mods

[timberwoof]

That makes since with the higher gearing in the SE.

[gectek]

well is that actual speed as measured from the wss on a scan tool, or off your speedo, because there are numerous posts on here about the speedo's being off, and ive even been told by cops that mine is off about 2mph on average, and that is my speedo shows 2mi under what im actually going, not to say im going faster than it says above 70, just to show that there can be many errors in the syst of using the average to calc the speed that it shows on the instrument cluster, i could go out and accurately measure my speedo with my scan tool and post results also, along with other data, but im having some trouble with the program to take the captured data off my scanner and put it on my comp...i know there are very few differences in the se and gt, but i still dont think any of them would allow above 135 stock or even that much, maybe 130 actual speed

[timberwoof]

Any of you guys have any leads on a cheaper BORLA exhaust?

[gectek]

cheaper borla......oxymoron?

thats like military intelligence or jumbo shrimp
i bought mine a long time ago when they were about $530 thats the cheapest i have ever seen them

if i ever get around to the sts setup, i may be sellin my muffler, but im not sure about that yet either

[timberwoof]

Are there other brands out there that work the same and have the same exhaust note. I'm tired of hearing all these loud exhausts that are gonna wake my son up on long drives. Or put me to sleep while I'm driving down the road. I also don't like setting off car alarms driving through parking lots. That's one of the reasons I'm leaning toward BORLA but good grief they're expensive.

[gectek]

slp makes a good one, i think they have the loud mouth and loud mouth II also, but i havent checked in a while. otherwise its universal cat back and R*** pipe.... if you wanna keep it sounding clean and have a nice note, just get the ss headers and the borla/slp exhaust, or 86 the headers and keep your stock cat and run either cat back, its not that loud at all. i have the headers and borla, if you are close enough to me in tx, maybe you could hear it some time

also modding the intake also makes the exhaust sound a little different too, just for info

[timberwoof]

I'm down here close to Corpus Christi, I don't know where Levelland is

[gectek]

well yah im up in the panhandle, 30 mi east of lubbock...not so good huh? but i go to San antonio sometimes through the year

[bballr4567]

Hey Wolf,

My mom is living in Port A right now and Im from Corpus but yea as you can see Im stuck in KY.

Anyways if I was you I would go the custom route so you can get an exhaust that will not only be cheaper but also be the note that you want. Sure SLP and Borla make great kits but to me they are pretty freakin expensive.

[timberwoof]

Well if I could find a performance exhaust that isn't to loud I would. I actually heard an exhaust on a v6 Import earlier this week that sounded good but I don't like the ricey look of the big cans. Now if they had one which would work for our cars then that would change my mind.

[gectek]

i think i would get a universal kit from flomaster or someone if you wanna go custom and just get a 1 inlet 2 outlet muffler, or split it and get 2 mufflers, if you dont want borla or slp

also i dont think the borla boomer mufflers sound too bad, and they arent trashcan looking either

[atc3434]

The SE stock limiter is 107, I think the gt was 126, 130, 136, something like that. I have headers, exhaust, and a DHP tune, so no more top speed limiter. Mine pulls well once you get it beyond 110mph, you gotta get the motor up into the powerband again once you hit third. I used to run a scan gauge, thats the only way in an SE to measure speed beyond 120mph. I never did get to the top of third, but I did about 135, and there was still rpm left to go, I lifted.

BTW, I'm running a 5-6 year old SLP exhaust, and its holding up well. ITs pretty loud, but I don't mind that one bit. If SLP is too loud, you can swap out to a quieter muffler, the magnaflow is supposed to have a nice note w/l being too loud. I can't get it too loud, I used to run with a cutout, and that was about perfect. Now THAT set off car alarms.