Well you can always go the cut out route if your worried about it being restrictive.
and pretty sure the stock Y won't work with a set of Long tubes.
My list would be in this Order

CAI
LT's full exhaust
Gears
Tune ( some people want extra money to retune stuff like gears this could cause me to change who tunes my car for it not being part of the free "retune")

 

I think we're almost agreeing to the same thing. When I had my LT1, my though was that if I was going to go Long tubes, I was going to do it right - clean up the heads, new O2s, quality LT (stainless), highflow cat and a quality catback, tune, etc. That's hard to do with a $1500 budget, even if you do it yourself, and as you know, going LT usually means you're going to break something in the process = unexpected costs of at least a hundred or so.

I'm old school and had a hard head when I was younger and working on cars, meaning I learned a lot of stuff about cars the hard way, like the guy in one thread who was going to only replace head gasket on one side only! The stuff I mentioned - shocks, gears, brakes - once it's done, you never have to go back (except for maybe the gears if you go high Hp = new rear end) and it will easily run under $1500, maybe enough to get a good tune and a hi flow muffler. I'd especially go this route if my car was a daily driver.

 

Yeah I got where you coming from. I'm more of your "budget builder" I picked up my Hooker Super comp racing headers and pre-made dual system for 325 bucks. And you can find used headers for good prices. But if my pockets were a bit deeper I'd have kooks or LPP's on the car but hey I'm a young guy who wants every single .1 out of his car and when you save money in curtain places you can go some where else with the money and start a different mod

 

Depends. If its a daily driver, good tires and suspension will benefit him a lot more than actual horsepower. Sometimes traction can win a race over horsepower, especially when in the street. But then again, im mostly talking about higher horsepower cars, not bolt ons. LTs are also a good choice, just depends on his plans for the car.