My son is going to get his driver's license pretty soon (time flies!), and he's wanting to buy a 1996 Trans-Am as his first car. Being a guy with a checkered early driving history myself, I'm very nervous that he should have a car with that much power as his first car. What I'm wondering is if there's an easy way to put an RPM limiter on an LT1 car that would be hard for him to disable (he's not very sharp on this stuff - at least not yet). If it were an LS1 car, I would set the RPM limiter at 3500 rpm or something like that with my HP Tuners. But I don't have a tool or software for the LT1, and I'd prefer not to spend too much money on this one little problem.

I'm thinking of this as the equivalent of training wheels on his bike. Once he's proven he can safely handle the car after a year or so, I can give him the full range of power.

 

Personally i wouldn't mess with the RPM's. You never know when traffic is going to be bad and you need to pull into that tight spot, or just an avoidable collision that when just stopping to avoid won't work. he'd be a sitting duck so-to-speak.

I completely agree with you, an LT1 might be too tempting to NOT mash the gas from time to time when your unexperianced at driving. Mabey get him a beater to "learn" on for a couple months? If hes dead set on the car, (I know I would be for my first car), mabey try putting a fuel-cutoff at a certain MPH with a tune. i dunno if its possible if it didnt come stock like that but I'd definitly do that before limiting the RPM's. Just my .02

 

make a bigger bump stop on the throttle or lengthen the cable so he can only push the throttle like at 50% but he thinks he has it floored!

thats what i would do......

 

Get him an LS based car, set a speed limited. It is under the Speed Limiter tab under Speedometer in HPTuners. He will be happier with an LS car anyway, lol.

 

I agree. Then there isnt anything he can do to take it off......unless he gets his hands on your hptuners

 

Agreed. Hidden throttle stop/restrictor plate is the best way to go about what you're wanting to do. Even with the software you can't really control the acceleration, which is what gets most kids in trouble.

 

Thanks everyone. I think we'll go with some kind of throttle limiter, as has been said.

By the way, we bought the car tonight. It's a beautiful black 1996 T/A convertible with only 73K miles on it. It looks like it's been babied. Only $4,500. My wife doesn't like that it's a convertible, thinking he might be able to roll it (which seems like a longshot to me). I don't know anyone who's ever rolled one of these cars, although I guess it's possible.

 

I let my neighbor/friend take my 00 trans am to prom. I set the RPM limiter to 3500 and speed limit to 57 MPH