How can I make my 02 GT a better car?

Have you thought of putting a new shortblock on the car with forged ARP internals, a 292 stroker, forged crankshaft, that can handle 900HP. You can get one for around 4,100 and its a good base to build the car from. Check out granatellimotorsports 2v pro extreme series 900HP, and 1500HP shortblocks with a stroker kit optionial. I like the 298ci stroked shortblock from illionoismotorsports.com. I think you can get and extra 25-30 HP from the stroker kit on it.

I am purchasing one myself right now from granatellimotorsports..The 2v pro extreme stroker 900HP series. The guy helping me with the building is himself putting a 5.0 Coyote in his 98 modular car and those are getting 375HP to 390HP. Some will say to save your money and get a procharger D1S with intercooler and you will be the most happy. They run 5100 and take 4 hours to install. If I could go back and not have blown my main berring putting comp cams stage 3's on my NA stock motor and a ton of other small upgradges here and there, the supercharger would have been it hands down.

I was wondering myself what you could do with a strong shortblock rated up to 900HP billeted vs a coyote vs a procharger.

I am going to have to run 16 pounds of boost to catch up with the coyote and the LS2,3 crowd.

I could put 4 valve cylinder heads on, or go with a nice set up ported 5angle trick flow heads, and matching intake manifold. That would be a good upgrade for you. Pick out a nice set up boost friendly cams.

Are you going for NA or supercharging it with a power adder. With the shortblock you can just have them for the same price up the compression ratio from 9:1 to 11:1 and pick up an extra 50HP just by changing pistons but only if the car will never be boosted. You can bolt the rest of your stock motor with PI heads on it too and run nitrous for 600$ or as much boost as you dare. Good luck.

4:10 gears was my favorite bang for the buck mod. Good luck. CHeck out the shortblock on illinois motorsports....look for the 298ci shortblock and tell me thats not cool.

I'm not nearly as knowledgeable as some of the other guys on here, but if you're only getting 160 miles per tank and feeling super sluggish I would think you aren't burning your fuel entirely. I would definitely start by checking to make sure you have a strong spark and all your plugs and coils are good. Reply on here after checking on that and we'll keep helping. There are a ton of guys on here that really know their stuff.

Okay, so I'm gonna take a wild guess here and say that so far your original question has gone unanswered Mike,
1). Yeah 160 miles per fill up is about 10mpg, something is really off there. Start with a tune up, check your air filter, do you know if the previous owner hand a hand help tuner? If someone doesn't know what they are doing on one of those (and not just loading a canned tune), they can F up a lot.
Poor gas mileage can be the result of a lot of different things, from bad EGR, cooling issues (does your car overheat), dirty injectors, bad coils, low compression.


Lets start with how long have you had it and what was the mileage and condition when you purchased it, has it been like this since you got it?
before we talk about modification, I think we need to get you back up and running. It sounds like you have some issues, which are also effecting your performance.


For the record, if you are wanting to keep decent gas mileage, pass on a 4:10 gear, that will just make it worse.

I almost wonder if the previous owner had a tune in it and set it back to stock, given that the car has a x-pipe with cat deletes and a CAI...

I agree with Sonic, go through the basic tune up items, if you are not familiar with this, people here can help from afar. Or find a friend, neighbor, relative that has some car knowledge to assist.

You need to get a baseline understanding of what your car is doing, and more important, not doing right.

I would stay away from any mods at the moment.