Capt Fiero
New member
So my wife daughter and I needed to take a short road trip, about 1000 miles round trip. I decided seeing as I did not personally know the history on the GTP I would give it the basics. Some plugs and wires. I went with the Autolite 606s for plugs and had some extra MSD 8.5mm Superconductors kicking around.
The plugs that I pulled out were so bad; I honestly don't know how the car ran on them. They had worn to a .120 gap. More than double what the spec was for them. (See pics below) Reaching the plugs was a cake walk, removing the plugs was easy, getting the boots off, was a freaking nightmare. The boots were burnt onto the plugs. It took 15 mins to re and re the plugs, 90mins to re and re the wires. Well, I changed the plugs and wires and took it for a spin, although I had more bottom end power, I had lost a fair bit of top end power. Which was rather frustrating? I went from a 14.9 1/4 down to a 15.2. I really did not have much time to fiddle with more stuff as we were due to leave in 2 days.
So we got on the road to Oregon from BC Canada. Car got great gas mileage, well maybe not great, but better than we had been getting. I chose to be the passanger so I could data log and watch sensor data, so even With my wife doing most of the driving, and she was averaging 80mph with a few spots in the 95ish range, and about an hour of stop and go traffic, she managed 26.4mpg on the trip down. Only 2 issues came to light on the trip. 1st was the ext. temp sensor failed, which disabled the A/C as the car thought it was 6 below zero outside. When it was really in the 80's and we really could have used the A/C. More on that later.
Lisa also noted that from a high speed stop, there was a bit of a shimmy in the front brakes. Which we suspect is an out of round rotor. So that will be on the list to do. Probably do all 4 corners with new pads and rotors just so we know they are done.
Me still feeling a bit frustrated that the car did not have the "SNAP" when you dropped the hammer at 40mph and it would downshift, I decided to take advantage of the cheap American auto parts suppliers. I was a bit worried that my old MSD wires were not up to snuff, so I grabbed a new set of Prebuilt BWG Wires, new fuel filter and new Cone Filter. One of Lisa's complaints was she could not hear the blower whine. So the first thing I did was replace the filter box with the cone filter and took it for a test drive, yep we have a noisy blower now. Power did increase a little bit too.
Next were the wires, so quickly popped off the MSD Wires and snapped the Borg wires on. Took it for another test drive, and some of the
"SNAP" was back. I think the Cone Filter and the Wires have actually increased the power a bit, enough so that even with the 225/60/16 Z rated tires the traction control is not able to keep them from spinning for at least a second or two from a dead stop. Looks like I'll need some bigger tires for the car. I HATE WHEELSPIN. You can never have too much traction, because if you do have too much traction, just means you don't have enough horsepower.
Well enough with the chit chat, here are the pics.
First up the plugs.
Honestly how did these even fire.
If the plugs were not bad enough, rusty coil packs, YIKES. I Used a brass brush to clean them up like new.
Couple quick pics down the oil filler hole to show the clean roller rockers.
My box of spare MSD and MISC Wires from various V8 and V6 tune ups.
A few naked engine shots
My solution to getting to the back plugs, gave me the extra couple inches of clearance I needed. I am use to doing plugs on a V8 Fiero, so this
was really a piece of cake, except for 2 of the stock wires were burnt onto the plugs. I twisted the boot so hard that I twisted the top of the
boot off. I had to get in there with pliers and just about break the plug to get the boot off.
My solution to mounting the Cone Filter was to modify the stock intake tube so it would accept the filter that had a 4" opening on it. Turned out it worked really well. I left the back half of the air box in place as I did not want to disturb the ECM that was under it. When we get
back to Canada I'll take my Air Die grinder to it and tweak it a bit.
This is just a random shot to show the BOSE logo on the speakers as someone asked if the system was really a BOSE System being it has a tape deck instead of a CD Player. Kind of odd for a 2000 model year if you ask me.
The plugs that I pulled out were so bad; I honestly don't know how the car ran on them. They had worn to a .120 gap. More than double what the spec was for them. (See pics below) Reaching the plugs was a cake walk, removing the plugs was easy, getting the boots off, was a freaking nightmare. The boots were burnt onto the plugs. It took 15 mins to re and re the plugs, 90mins to re and re the wires. Well, I changed the plugs and wires and took it for a spin, although I had more bottom end power, I had lost a fair bit of top end power. Which was rather frustrating? I went from a 14.9 1/4 down to a 15.2. I really did not have much time to fiddle with more stuff as we were due to leave in 2 days.
So we got on the road to Oregon from BC Canada. Car got great gas mileage, well maybe not great, but better than we had been getting. I chose to be the passanger so I could data log and watch sensor data, so even With my wife doing most of the driving, and she was averaging 80mph with a few spots in the 95ish range, and about an hour of stop and go traffic, she managed 26.4mpg on the trip down. Only 2 issues came to light on the trip. 1st was the ext. temp sensor failed, which disabled the A/C as the car thought it was 6 below zero outside. When it was really in the 80's and we really could have used the A/C. More on that later.
Lisa also noted that from a high speed stop, there was a bit of a shimmy in the front brakes. Which we suspect is an out of round rotor. So that will be on the list to do. Probably do all 4 corners with new pads and rotors just so we know they are done.
Me still feeling a bit frustrated that the car did not have the "SNAP" when you dropped the hammer at 40mph and it would downshift, I decided to take advantage of the cheap American auto parts suppliers. I was a bit worried that my old MSD wires were not up to snuff, so I grabbed a new set of Prebuilt BWG Wires, new fuel filter and new Cone Filter. One of Lisa's complaints was she could not hear the blower whine. So the first thing I did was replace the filter box with the cone filter and took it for a test drive, yep we have a noisy blower now. Power did increase a little bit too.
Next were the wires, so quickly popped off the MSD Wires and snapped the Borg wires on. Took it for another test drive, and some of the
"SNAP" was back. I think the Cone Filter and the Wires have actually increased the power a bit, enough so that even with the 225/60/16 Z rated tires the traction control is not able to keep them from spinning for at least a second or two from a dead stop. Looks like I'll need some bigger tires for the car. I HATE WHEELSPIN. You can never have too much traction, because if you do have too much traction, just means you don't have enough horsepower.
Well enough with the chit chat, here are the pics.
First up the plugs.
Honestly how did these even fire.
If the plugs were not bad enough, rusty coil packs, YIKES. I Used a brass brush to clean them up like new.
Couple quick pics down the oil filler hole to show the clean roller rockers.
My box of spare MSD and MISC Wires from various V8 and V6 tune ups.
A few naked engine shots
My solution to getting to the back plugs, gave me the extra couple inches of clearance I needed. I am use to doing plugs on a V8 Fiero, so this
was really a piece of cake, except for 2 of the stock wires were burnt onto the plugs. I twisted the boot so hard that I twisted the top of the
boot off. I had to get in there with pliers and just about break the plug to get the boot off.
My solution to mounting the Cone Filter was to modify the stock intake tube so it would accept the filter that had a 4" opening on it. Turned out it worked really well. I left the back half of the air box in place as I did not want to disturb the ECM that was under it. When we get
back to Canada I'll take my Air Die grinder to it and tweak it a bit.
This is just a random shot to show the BOSE logo on the speakers as someone asked if the system was really a BOSE System being it has a tape deck instead of a CD Player. Kind of odd for a 2000 model year if you ask me.
)