Come off the freeway engine really hot, parked car, smelt something funny under hood, ignored it went for lunch.
Got back to car fired it up and was misfiring on 3 and the boot, engine side had split open. Trying to remove it fell completely apart.
Luckily I knew a shop with parts not far away, & they had a single wire that was 3 inches short but made it fit. Took a city bus eek but I'm back in business.

So I get home, look at my records, these wires are actually 9 years old!
Lesson to myself, change the darn wires & plugs every 5 years.
The 3.8 wires routing up front let wires cook from exhaust manifold heat rising !!
New NGK wires coming soon !!

well one there is suppose to be heat shield boots on the wire boot but i see it has none on there

Yes good point. I'll try to find a set of these: A-Team 1200 degree spark plug wire boot heat shield, 6 inch black.

Why not switch that short one plug wire with the number two cylinder right there next to it. No need to stretch it like that. Better yet replace all of them old wires.

These old wires/boots are brittle. Trying to remove the short wire boot away from spark plug, could cause it to fall apart.
The car is currently driveable, & new plug wires are ordered. Should be here in about 2 weeks.

My Park Ave never had its heat shields, found it odd....

https://shop.advanceautoparts.com/p/...0heat%20shield

ACDelco Spark Plug Wire Heat Shield

1 YR REPLACEMENT IF DEFECTIVE
Part # 8006

It'* no surprise most of the 3.8 OEM heat shield'* made their way to the trash. Shops hated them. They got rusted in place, and were known as finger slicer'*. Some had to resort to tin snips for removal.
I also do not remember ever seeing them on my PA either. Since the advent of silicone plug wires,with better heat resistant cores, It'* no surprise they were never replaced.

my 99 ultra has manifold heat shields. Helps with the wires up front.. maybe yours got too warm

Sounds like some kind of bad material to me, or maybe all the cleanings got to be too much.

My factory set lasted eight years, and were still good when I replaced them (for what ended up being a bad MAF). My current set has gone 16 years so far. I suspect this has to do with the type of materials used . . . or the fact that I never clean them.

I bet these will outlast the car.

Almost every one that I've seen had the shields on the rear plug boots and not on the front ones. I agree they are a pain to deal with. Knowing GM I'm sure they didn't spend the extra $0.69 per car on adding them without a good reason, so I put mine back on.