more power?

rem 870 ex mag · January 3, 2007

i have a 1988 GMC sierra 1500 w/ a 350. it is a daily driver, but i also do a lot of off roading/mudding. i have a flowmaster exhaust, a K&N aircharger, 33in Super Swampers, lift, etc... i was looking for more power w/o too much money. would a higher flow carb be my best bet? i dont want anything too hard too install. thanks.

dewfpo · January 3, 2007

i have a 1988 GMC sierra 1500 w/ a 350. it is a daily driver, but i also do a lot of off roading/mudding. i have a flowmaster exhaust, a K&N aircharger, 33in Super Swampers, lift, etc... i was looking for more power w/o too much money. would a higher flow carb be my best bet? i dont want anything too hard too install. thanks.

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in my experience, high flow carbs are only good on high rpm machines, unless your talking about vacuum secondary quadrajet type carbs that have small high velocity primaries. If you want more power around town, a high flow carb is not the way to go IMHO.

Depending on what rpm you typically run at, small tube headers may help, a gearing change might be too expensive, a supercharger would work great but would be way expensive as well. A bigger engine would work as well but that's a PIA anymore. You could change the cam but that's a rat's nest to me. You might loose low end and gain high end or vice versa depending on what you do but you can't have it better low and high.

Maybe a custom tune from Wester's, Wait4me or PCM4less would be your best bang for the buck unless you already have one.

But not much more you can do (based on what you already have) with not much money I'm afraid.

DEWFPO

95Sierra2500 · January 3, 2007

You could get a performance intake manifold and headers, and a cam would really wake up your beast. However, if you don't do the work yourself, you're looking at quite a bit of cost in labor.

citydriver · January 4, 2007

CARB?!? GM used Throttle Body Injection units on their engines starting in '87....Has the engine been swapped out or modified?

95Sierra2500 · January 5, 2007

CARB?!? GM used Throttle Body Injection units on their engines starting in '87....Has the engine been swapped out or modified?

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I have a friend with a 1989 short box 2wd pickup with a 350...and it most definately has a carb on it. Never been modified either.

bigred91 · January 6, 2007

if your 89 chevy has a carb that is definately a new one to me. i had an 88 with tbi and now i have a 91 which also has tbi

dewfpo · January 7, 2007

I've seen more than one person confuse a TBI for a carb.

DEWFPO

redvett · January 7, 2007

GM changed over to TBI in 1987 the only exception is the HD trucks that had a dual exhaust and 2 smog pumps in 3/4 HD and larger trucks.

SPARK CHASER · January 7, 2007

i have a 1988 GMC sierra 1500 w/ a 350. it is a daily driver, but i also do a lot of off roading/mudding. i have a flowmaster exhaust, a K&N aircharger, 33in Super Swampers, lift, etc... i was looking for more power w/o too much money. would a higher flow carb be my best bet? i dont want anything too hard too install. thanks.

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A 1988 GM pickup with a Carb? The TBI units do sorta look like a Carburator. I will assume you're talking about a TBI unit. Holley makes a bolt on 670 cfm TBI unit replacement (part#HLY-502-6). Holley claims 25% more torque and horsepower. Costs $400 from Summit Racing equipment. I installed a similar unit on my 1993 a couple of months ago. It seems to do what Holley advertised. The truck definitely has a lot more mid-range "get up and go" than it did with the old Rochester unit. I installed this unit in about an hour and has been worth every penny I paid for it.

Another Mod. you may consider is replacing your GM pellet type catalytic converter

with a Honeycomb "performance" converter from Dynomax/Walker. It cost me about $120 at O'reilly's. You may be able to find one cheaper online somewhere. They called it a "Bolt In" replacement, well not exactly. You will use every cuss word in the book by the time you get it installed. I say it's good for at least 20-25 more horses at the rear wheels.