Thread: Let's just rename this PurpleGuy's GTO tuning endeavor

I still have stuff for sale peeps. Buy it up. Willing to work with people on prices.

Stattama setup, built trans, ported heads, TEP cam, Alpine PDX amps, spoilers, HID's

****box is getting some maintenance. Been driving it daily again.

Got a new battery.

Got a new set or Monroe quick struts. It’s needed struts for a looooong time. Still make noise in the back which is kinda odd. I feel like it’s some suspension bushing making noise or sheet metal rubbing which is sketchy lol. Oh well probably just gonna live with it.

Scored a new Delphi fuel pump/assembly unit for 30 bucks on amazon. Seems like it was a typo cause after I got it the price was over 200 like on rockauto. Anyway, ever since I put the 255 in its seemed to have priming issues. New Delphi pump seems to have taken care of that.

About 5K ago the pad material fell off the backing on the passenger front. Didn’t have time and only did the one side. Got the driver side done so new pads up front. Due for rear pads. Doesn’t have any shake so just gonna slap pads in it and call it good.

Umm. Made a new set of retros. Didn’t go quite as well as the old ones for some reason. Cut off lines are weird and the one won’t go high enough. Oh well. Whatever.

Got a pair of 40 dollar tires with 6/32’s on them. My road rage killed my nice Michelin’s lol. Mounted them myself and I’ll have to get them balanced. I also need to get front hubs and LCA’s for it. Neither are too hot. Rear hubs are ****in MINT though which is cool for having 196K on them.

Ummm. Think I’m gonna get a new windshield put in since it’s cracked and also leaks water.

Aaannndd. That’ll be about it. Gonna fix the trans solenoids and rock it till it rots in half.



TL;DR. Fixing stuff to make it a decent daily again.

Damnn homie. That's a good amount of maintenance done, and planned. That's the spirit tho..., fit it up and make it road worthy. Keep the Grand Prix's on the road!

Needs the turbo mod LOL

I’m not sure how much longer it has CHI. Rust is getting bad lol.

And no. Turbo mod is long gone to California lol

Ordered el cheapo hubs. That’s all.

I guess I can update this. It's only been a year and a half lol

I had been looking at GXP's for awhile and managed to find one only a couple miles from home. I went and looked at it and said, "used and abused, no thanks" I went in and talked to them anyway just to see how much they wanted for it. Said it needed some work and they wanted 5K the way it sat or 6K after the fixed whatever they needed to fix. Way too high. I ended up talking them down to 3200 buks on it. Fair deal I thought for having brand new Bilsteins and tires on it. About 1500 bucks worth of stuff there. So I bought it. Got the title a week later and found out it was a salvage title car. Went back and they said they'd either buy the car back or cut me a check for 400 bucks. I took the 400, so the car end up costing 2800 bucks.

As I bought it-fairly rough but not horrible. It was the cheapest GXP I could fine in a 250 mile radius and it was only 5 minutes away



Brand new Bilsteins on it


Car was a mess inside. I don't see that I ever got any after pics but it cleaned up nice and I put Weathertec mats in it



Found this rolled up in the rubber cover where the driver's belt bolts onto the seat, I'm sure we know what this was for...


Engine bay was horrid when I got it. Air box was broke. Check out my sweet visegrips to hold the positive cable on the battery too, ended up replacing both battery cable ends, no pic of that either I guess. Couple cans of brake clean and a powerwasher cleaned it up really well. Ended up putting a Cold Air Inductions intake on it that I scored for stupid cheap. Over 300 dollar intake new and I paid 100 bucks for it basically brand new. I don't see that I have any pics of that either. Did plugs and wires on it. NGK TR55IX's I think is what they were, MSD wires. I don't see what the big fuss is about plugs on these. They're no harder than a 3800 car.
Anyway, only pic I have of the bay dirty


Did some suspension work. The car already handled good for a nose heavy fwd car. I think GM did a half decent job on the handling department of these. There's always room for improvement though.
Did the Dorman 34mm bar I had been trying to sell forever, Addco 639 rear bar, new LCA's with Moog spherical bushings pressed in, Canuck drop drop springs, and also got an old Otto racing STB that I heavily massaged(AKA beat it with a hammer until it fit) to clear the alternator. New sway links for the front for the different style bar. New Moog bigger links in the rear. The car stuck hard even with the ****ty no name tires on it. It was a blast on curvy roads





Cleaned up the front end a tad. The headlights were miserable and the turn signal were so hazed over they were worthless. So retros and new turn signal housings were put in




Here's a shot after the front end stuff and after the Canuck's settled


Mufflers were rusted through and car was very loud, especially in DOD mode, sounded horrible. Put on Borla Pro XS muffs, sounded perfect I thought. Quiet for everyday driving but they did come to life when you mashed it


Other stuff I don't have pictures of are trans cooler install. Trans got over 210* with ease even on the interstate. After the cooler I never saw about 176* even beating the dog piss out of it on a windy low speed road. It usually hung around 150* even in the summer heat. Cooler was a well worthwhile investment for that car. I also found the trans had been rebuilt when I did the cooler. Found a tag on the trans haha

Had DOD turned off with HP tuners, mileage didn't change but maybe .5mpg worse. But it stopped drinking oil so who gives a ****. It would burn a quart between fill ups with DOD on.

It also had a full stereo in the car that I robbed from the purple car. Made the 5 1/4" Alpine's work up front in the 6 1/2" hole. Bought a new 5 channel JBL amp to run the whole car. Sounded good I thought.

Ummm, I had an LS1 intake setup for it I planned on putting on but never got around to it


That's about it, was definitely a fun car for a daily but wasn't a good daily. It was stiff-my fault. But mileage wasn't that good either, it averaged 17-18 at best, maybe 15 in the winter. Found the car in the next post and then the GXP went bye bye

As you guys can imagine I didn't drive the purple car much after getting the GXP, but it stayed around for a spare car. Was browsing the marketplace on FB one day(damn that marketplace anyway)

Found a nice 01 Regal GS that had blowby he said, pictures from the ad. 118K on it. Had a plog, ZZP FWI and supposedly an Intense tune.



Went and looked at it, couldn't get it started-wouldn't even crank. It was cold and flurrying so I didn't care, I wanted to go. But it was clean and couldn't tell that it had any rust so for 800 bucks I was taking it home. Couple pics when I went and looked at it-can see the GXP in the one pic. Car was dirty but nice underneath the dirt. Went back the next weekend and loaded the car on a trailer in the damn snow and pulled it home.



First pics off the trailer, it sat here for the winter. I wasn't pissing with it in the cold-drove the GXP


A shot of the rocker on one side-SOLID. The car came out of Oklahoma I guess. The kid's grandma bought it brand new and gave it to him for college I guess up in Iowa.


So it go warmer out-figured out the car needed a starter, course I had one of those laying around from other 3800's lol. Got it started but didn't run well at all
Pulled plugs and 3 of the 6 were smashed


Put in mismatched plugs I found laying around and got it to run-blow by for days, I didn't even both with a compression test


So here we are. Have a very nice body Regal with a blown engine and a good running GP with a rusted to **** body. Can guess where this is going. In the shop the GP goes-running for the last time ever. 199K on it, had it for almost 10 years. Motor/trans was out in about 2 hours.


Pushed outside and the suspension was pulled off since it was pretty new, left it sitting on 4X4's and it was picked up with a loader and hauled off that way


Motor/trans came out of the Buick and the bay got a bath, cleaned up nice. My original plan was to turn it back 100% stock engine wise. Later decided that **** is boring lol. Left the rockers in and replaced the original valve springs with L76 springs and matching retainers. New valve seals while the springs were off only made sense. No pics here I don't think.


Pulled heads off the original Buick engine, 3 out of 6 pistons chipped-explains 3 smashed plugs. I'm sure it was rebuildable but I chucked it in the scrap pile and let them take it. I wasn't dickin with it.




GP motor ready to go in. Resealed everything except for headgaskets. Front and rear covers, front and rear mains, oil filter housing adapter, oil pan, LIM, new OPSU, thermostat/gaskes, v/c gaskets. I wanted it to be absolutely leak free when I was done. I used a whole case of brake clean on this thing lol. The GP blower was a 97 with the extra vac tree so I put the snout from it on the Regal blower so it was the correct blower vacuum routing wise. Lower mileage blower anyway so why not.


Back in the hole. The ZZP oil fill cap went in the garbage. That thing is so hard to get on and off it's stupid. It also got new rad hoses, power steering lines, trans cooler lines and anything else I could think of while it was apart. Leak free was the goal again.


Sold the plog off the Buick and got the one from the GP retigged since it was leaking. Looks nooooice


First drive went good-after pic


I had Vosla 9012/9011 bulbs in the car but headlights were still miserable. Even the high beams were meh in my book. Old habits are hard to break so retros were in order




Had it up on ramps recently and man is the thing nice underneath. It's getting Fluid Filmed to avoid it turning into a rust bucket and it's not getting driven in the snow if I can help it. It's too nice to let it rust out


Went as far as pulling fender liners and cleaning them out to spray inside the wells. Right rear someone had out and didn't put back in correctly. Bunch of buildup-this **** is part of why these car rust so bad


Right front had two liners in it for some reason. The closer one is missing the part that covers the washer reservoir/bumper area


Car is running a Plog, 3" DP, 1.9 rockers with L76 springs, 3.4" pulley and the Intense tune that was in the car when I bought it. Runs good and pulls 21* of timing without knock but I think I want more. IC or meth is in order I think. Maybe both?

Been a great DD though. Taken it to Kansas City and Chicago with zero hiccups. Averaged over 30mpg on the Chicago trip. Put close to 10K on it this year. More pics in the next post. I have to be awfully close to the 25 pic limit.

After a heavy cleaning. I haven't clayed and waxed a car in years. This thing cleaned up great. I would like to give it a buff eventually though. No retros in these pics. I did the retros very recently. Drove the car all summer with stock lights since it's light out most of the time.





The car has the full stereo from the GXP but no pics of that. I put the remote start/alarm from the old purple car into this. Remote start rules lol

I got a set of 18" Buick Lucerne wheels I think they are. Need to get correct size tires for them, maybe next summer


I think that's about it so far

poor purple car just left on the side of the yard to finish rotting away lol regal looks damn good tho.

Haha yea. Idk where it's at now. My dad has some lady that comes and picks up scrap. Car has been gone for months. Kind bittersweet but the car was too bad to be worth saving. This Regal is nicer in every way except for looks.

I also forgot to mention the Buick has Intrigue springs out back to give it a little more height. It doesn't sag in the ass one bit with the 12" sub/amp back there and the normal spare. It probably even is slightly raked.

At some point I may make a thread for this car that I bought a couple months ago. 89 IROC 305TPI/700r4. It's so slow. The Buick would out run it with ease. Not entirely sure what I want to do with it yet. Solid car underneath. Has power window, locks, mirror, driver seat, rear defrost, AC, cruise and it all works amazingly.



Options are:
1st option-Build a 383 stroker TPI. This will have boat loads of torque but lousy HP. It'd be lucky to make 400hp but it would probably break the 500tq mark. It will also be expesnsive. Easily 5K to build a 400hp 383TPI. There are options out there to ge rid of the long runner(TPI) and go to a short runner which will see huge HP gains but pull torque down.

2nd option-LS swap, duh. Why not. There's tons of parts out there for this. It would retain all accessories including the working AC. I actually already bought a 2wd 4.8 Chevy truck to rob the drivetrain out of. Not set on this yet though-so many LS third gens out there it'd be cooler to still have a TPI. LS is very cost effective though given that I only paid 280 bucks for the truck running and driving and there's bolt on parts for everything I would need. Trans does need rebuilt as there's no 3rd gear but I think I can handle that. I've rebuilt a couple Allison's although it's been some time. If I got a service manual I have no doubt that I could handle it. Burnout in the truck of course. Not a lot of power here but easy potential with even the little 4.8. Definitely needs a power adder though-boost for sure.
https://flic.kr/p/2hSDyJN

3rd option-sell it and get a C5 like I've wanted for quite some time. The easiest option.

They're available again. For awhile they were out of stock or discontinued or whatever. But you can get them on Rockauto and Amazon. AcDelco part number 505548 for the front and 505549 for the rear

I was looking back through and I see the blowby vid doesn't play so here's a direct link. https://flic.kr/p/2dhREh2

Sooo how many cars ya got? Lol anyhoo sad to see the purple car go by the way side but her heart lives on.

Gxp is maybe the new purple car?

Lol I want to see more of the camaro

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Currently I have the 2001 Regal, 2002 Supercrew F150, the iroc, nd the 02 Chevy truck I bought for the 4.8 to go in the IROC. The GXP was the purple car replacement until the Regal came along. The GXP was more fun to drive but for daily duty the Regal is 100% better, it also gets 5+mpg better all around and with the mods it has I think it'd hold the GXP off to 100-110 or so. I have the power itch though, it needs more. It slows down quite a bit after it gets heatsoaked.

I do also have the sled that I've always had and a couple of Seadoos but I won't get into those. Damn 2 strokes

I don't really have any other pics of the iroc. It's nothing much to see. Just your typical 80's mullet mobile

My next and last mod for the gtp will be a meth kit to handle heatsoak and give it the last bit of pep that it needs just a thought for the regal

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I've been thinking on it hard. Only bad part is i'll have to buy tuning software too to tune it afterward.

Maybe you could by a tuner that could tune all 4 of your vehicle's?

To me that would make it more cost effective

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The only thing I would tune is the Buick and the Camaro for the 4.8 swap. HPT will handle both of those but I have very little tuning knowledge