2000 M6 w/100k

Thought I might post an update on my tune-up and catch-can upgrade. This forum helped quite a bit in getting a feel for what needed to be done to what degree.

Tune-up consisted of replacing all plugs, wires, adding protective wire boots, and replacing what I suspect were faulty upstream O2 sensors. Car was previously experiencing poor fuel-efficiency, stumbling and back-firing at low-RPMs, and a clear loss of overall power.

The sleeves are by Design Engineering. The material appears to be a basalt mineral wool. At first glance the quality is apparent and they have stood up to direct-contact heat from headers. Although, as some of you have encountered, they do not fit our factory heat shields. Some folks just cut the ring and pull it out in order to fit them around the wire ends, compromising the material, albeit not by much, but it sat poorly with me. So, I figured out something else just playing around with the construction. Maybe someone else has figured this out before me, but I did not come across this anywhere in my research on creating a solution and a procedure for rectifying the problems the car was having. I hope this will aid someone in the future.


I found that you can turn the sleeves inside-out and loosen the stitching.



You can gently pinch and tug at a localized spot on the seam and the weaving will start to unravel.



Completely separated from the seam



You can now take the ring out





Ring removed



Now we just tuck it back together



Part way into flipping sides back to the original orientation, the frayed portion shown here is the frayed portion shown in the next photo extruding from the inside





Now you can also adjust the length of the boot to protect the entire length of the wire, hiding them under the engine cover if you like. The plug wires are Summit Racing 8.5mm ignition wires SUM-887830. The specifications exceed GM red wires and the price was only about $57.


As you can see the sleeve will now accommodate the socket



Getting the sleeves to all be equal lengths took some finagling but it wasn't much of a chore. Nothing you couldn't do while watching youtube.



New NGK TR55IX .040 vs Original factory plug. How bad is the original?



Even bank on left, odd bank on right

My valve cover gaskets probably need replacing. I have mild concerns about plugs 3 and 7. Take into account I installed my catch-can the same time as the tune-up was performed. My exhaust is vastly cleaner than before and it appears to have little to no fowling from excess oil. Maybe one of you more experienced folk can chime in if you think there is a problem regardless. This is a DD and I don't really rag on the engine, mostly just cornering.

Perhaps I should inspect the new plugs? I have put about 1k on the car since the install.



Yeah so... unpolished metal... does it matter if the metal has a dull finish? Well... maybe. How much does it actually matter? Eyeballing this someone might claim, "Nah no big deal, there is no objective reason to polish these beyond the emotional compulsion driven by shiny things." Until they do some rough surface-area calculations taking into account the radically different topography(that cannot be precisely measured without some uncommon tools) of a polished surface vs an unpolished one and then throw in a rough estimation of the fraction of radiant energy incident on the metal shield in a system involving a single exhaust header then a second one, blah blah blah, my model was stabbed full of assumptions not knowing exactly what everything was made of, but not so much that I couldn't come to making an overly-conservative conclusion that the polished surface will actually reflect quite a bit of heat in comparison with a rough surface, and that if I did not do this my engine would readily explode.



Is there a better tool for this? PROBABLY, but I don't feel like looking for one.



oOOOoooo so pretty!



I'm way too proud of these



Catch-can installed, plugs and wires done.





The problems the car was having prior to this tune up have disappeared completely. Throttle response returned and the engine felt much stronger. The exhaust pulses are noticeably more concise. I cannot definitively say if the components hold anything over factory ones, but I can say I do not remember the car providing this much feedback and performance. The catch can is working quite well as my exhaust tips are now much easier to clean and what there is to clean is mostly easily removed soot. Before it was like a burnt polymer coating.

Thank you for reading and thank you to all the folks that provided feedback on my original post!

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...endations.html