Is Stage 3 worth it or would we be better off with something else?

 

It all depends on what you want out of the car. There is alot of variables, money, warranty, power, and there also is a bunch of kits to choose from.

 

Your warrantee will be voided once stage 3 is installed. It only for off road use...

 

Waste of $$ except for the dual pass intercooler adapter.

 

If your going stage 3, there's no warranty. So I think you can get better bang for your buck elsewhere, look at TAG racecraft. They have a ton of good stuff.

 

I would say go aftermarket as well. You'll see better performance gains and your warranty will be voided either way.

 

Use the dual pass plate from the S3 kit and get a custom tune done somewhere with a small pulley!.

 

Pretty much. If you're going to void your warranty, you shouldn't have to pay GM to do so. Go aftermarket and get some real gains.

 

Stage 3 is weak. I'm just going to buy the PCM becuase it's bad ass.

For cooling, a bigger heat exchanger would be just fine.

 

hmmm i dunno ... it comes Pre-programmed for optimal performance of 100 octane and allows you to support a 50 shot of nitrous. it also allows you to adjust the redline ... when it comes down to it I think it is more fully featured that some give it credit for and you can simply swap it out to go back to street legal setup. best of both world imo

 

With Stage 3 on bottle your gonna have a fast car. Its gonna be safe because the n20 only fires under the right conditions and the HOM is cool too. If you want everything to work right and want power without ripping your car apart Stage 3 is a good deal and a good power adder. Sure there are a ton of different way's to go but for most people Stage 3 is more than they will ever want/need. There are only a few guys out there that want power bad enough, like me, 06blackg85ss, bdwarr, victory red ss, and a few others that will rip apart thier engines and put pistons, valvetrain, etc, in just to get all the power they can out of this car. This kit, on bottle, however will bring kids up to over 300whp for alot cheaper and easier than how alot of us did it. As far as I'm concerned, for the price, security & engineering that went into this kit I would use it and I recommend it to anyone that wants power out of thier cobalt or redline.

 

So....what about the pistons? I know the people who have had their pistons crap out on them didn't have great tunes, but I also heard the stock pistons wouldn't be able to hold much more than 300 hp....

 

If you do it right the pistons will hold up. How GM did it is probaly the safest way. The eaton cant give enough boost to make big power #'s. Spinning the blower down to a 2.7" and then putting juice to about 350whp I think the car will be fine. The pistons aren't pieces of crap but they arent the stongest things in the world either. Just keep the cylinder temps down with enough fuel and I wouldn't be suprised if your engine lasted just as long with 350whp on bottle as a 270whp engine with bolt on's. The problem is noone wants to do stuff the correct way. When you cut corners you will end up in trouble. Maybe not today and maybe not tommorrow but you will end up in trouble. I'm running a solid 10.3 a/f ratio right now on my car until I can have (insert mystery tuning shop here) tune it. I have no problem tuning it myself but this car runs so crazy different with the higher compression that I need everything redone and I really dont wanna do that, lol. So I'm running it safer than safe right now and the car runs beautiful, minus the black smoke all over my bumper. But I've ran 1 car with this setup, which was a newer Camaro SS with a throttle body and I had him by about 3 cars up to 110 then for some reason during the middle of third gear he flew 2 cars ahead of me, me and PUP think it was because he was hiding nitrious but based on good faith lets just say my car runs too fat in 3rd, so I'm making some good power while running safe and I cant wait to see what the car will do once its tuned. But I think this kind of power can be had easily with GM Stage 3, nitrous isnt evil but it cant be if not used properly.