88 Chevy C1500

reignman400 · December 21, 2004

I have a 350ci EFI tied in with hooker competition headers and a dynomax dual exhaust system on a 1988 Chevy C1500. I'm not exactly sure how much horsepower i'm putting out but I would say its somewhere between 250-280. What could I do to add horspower to my truck to get it up above the 300 range? Thx

superbee · December 21, 2004

250-280hp may be a little high of an estimate if that's all of your mods. Your computer really limits what you can do. How much do you have to spend? Can you tune yourself? What is your goal, speed, acceleration, towing the Space Shuttle? We're gonna need more info.

fastdrvr23 · December 23, 2004

Yeah, I agree with Superbee. I had an 89 C1500 with a 305 that I rebuilt as a 350. The 350's at the time only came with 200hp stock. Figure in about 30hp if you're lucky for the headers and exhaust.

A cam and intake manifold will help noticeably with the exhaust work you already have, a larger Throttle Body should help too, since it's TBI.

So here's what I did, and I might have had 300hp N/A... With the 75hp dry shot, I had over 300 pretty easy. I'd recommend everything except for the N2O, I spent so much money filling that bottle all the time, that I am still bitter.

1. Intake Manifold (I used Edelbrock Performer that worked great)

2. Larger Throttle body (I went with a BBK that was 40% larger than stock or something like that, that was back in 1993. lol)

3. Cam (I went with a package that came with the intake manifold above from Edelbrock)

4. Hotter Ignition coil,coil pack, and wires... (MSD worked good)

5. Jet makes a pretty good PROM chip, it didn't seem to help me that much though.

You'll want a new lower temp thermostat for that...

6. Dry nitrous setup from N.O.S. (Edelbrock makes these kits, or they did back then) A 75 shot will make a huge difference, a 150 shot will scare you! Just get used to shelling out lots of $$ to refill the bottle, buying lots of spark plugs, and running high octane gas.

6. I used a B&M shift kit and cooler, as you won't want to punish the tranny any more than you have too.

Anyways, sorry to write so much. You'll get to 300hp pretty easy I'd bet. Good luck!