Hi everybody, my wife & I just bought a 2000 SSEi Bonnie last week & Im looking for some suggestions. First off let me start with a bit about myself & some details on the car. I have grown up around Street Rods all my life & started working on cars as a kid at barley 12 years old. There is really almost nothing I havent or cant do with a car, or even wont try. But being that most everything I have ever modified was V8 powered & N/A the whole SC V6 thing is a new ride for me.
Ok on to the car. As I said it a 2000 SSEi, & as far as I can tell it has everything offered except the factory 12 disk changer. It has just a bit over 100,000 mi on it & everythng looks to be stock & so far in good working order. Just the other day I ran through some of the basic stuff. I changed the oil to full synthetic, replaced the fuel filter, both the acc belt & sc belts with the goodyear gatorbacks, Dropped in a K&N air filter & changed out the 195 thrmastat for a 180 one.

Alright now for some questions. First off is I really wont to open up the exhaust but I don't wont it to sound like some 16 year olds POS with no pipes. I have thought about a pair of 3 chamber Flowmasters & doing away with the resonator & mabey a high flow cat, & more than likley going to 3" pipe to the Y before the muffs. I might go to a set of headders but I havent decided on that yet. I have seen where a couple people have done away with the resonator & didnt like the results so I may go for another option there. Dose someone make a high flow one?
I also plan on changing the coil packs to either MSD or Accel along with a good set of spiral core wires, but Im not sure yet on the plugs.
There are quite a few other little things I might do, such as PCM, roller rockers, & sc pulley but that will be down the road.
Im not looking or expecting to gain a gob of power but rather open up what compermises the factory has put in place. The exhaust is the biggest thing right now. I wont something that sounds good with a deep mellow tone to it that breathes good. Im really stuck on the Flowmasters as that is what I have used on just about everything I have owned, & IMO there just isnt a better sounding muffler out there if you get the right one on the right car.
Anyway thats all I can think of at the moment. Just wonted to get some others opinions & advice. Its been a bit since Ive had the wrenches in my hands (thanks to a led foot & previous car ) But Ive had my eyes on this year Bonnie since they came out & plan to keep it & have some fun as well.

I'm going to leave most of the stuff to those that are S2 experts, but I'll give you this much now:

1. Stay away from accel coils. They're ****. MSD are good, but will net you very little.

2. Stay away from Taylor wires. Belden Premiums work well for many, as do OEM wires.

3. Stay away from Bosch plugs or platinum plugs of any type.

Sounds like you're off to a good start! The stock exhaust flows pretty good, but could use an upgrade soundswise. There are a couple sound clips on the site, Silverbullet has magnaflow, Rogue has flowmaster, and I've got a dynatech. I haven't heard Silverbullet'* yet, but Rogue'* sounds good. Mine sounds like that punk kid without exhaust. Check out intense-racing.com, they've got all you need. Good luck, and enjoy the power!

Why bother changing coil pack , use money for your exhaust.t

exactly. change the tuneup stuff but I woudl only replace the coils if they are bad, not so much like some cars out there, plus I doubt you would see or more importantly feel any gain in power or fuel efficency. this is not personally what I have seen, but going off several expereinces I have seen.


I would put that money toward like a 3.5" SC pulley, maybe some PEMS, they arnt that expensive, that way you would have next to no KR. and you would have no problems after that if you made sure the exhaust was not causing restrictions.

those are supporting mods for future upgrades. The 3800SC motors have a lot of potential in other ways than a lot of cars, plus having a 13 second 4 door v6 car is cool too.

Is your airbox "gutted" to go along with that K&N? If not that'd be a great CHEAP way to get some more power and hear more of that supercharger whine! I'm not familair with the 2000+ airboxes, but do a search or just use some intuition and you'll figure out what to do. If you want to spend a little more money and get something with good laminar airflow into the throttle body, check out Intense'* fenderwell intake system. The 2000+ body'* have a great setup to run the FWI without worrying much about road grime. If anything though, gut that airbox!

Those of us with older motors will benefit more from the coils. Buit the 97 and newer supercharged motors have a hotter coil from the factory. The MSD is only marginally hotter than those already on a 97 or newer L67.

I personally benefitted from it, ignoring the fact that I had one or two failing when hot, simply because I started with the older, weaker coils to begin with.

I do prefur MSD but have never had any problems from Accel. But this was one of the things I also was curious about. As you guys have said it would probley get little results. GM has seamed to get it togeather a bit more for ignition latley though. Im just used to dealing with there older HEI systems that fall on there face after about 4500.

What is it you don't like about Taylor wires? I have used several differnt wires before from Taylor with good results.

I do have to agree on the Bosch plugs those things are pure crap. I have tryed two differnt type of the bosch plugs a few years back, one set kept fouling out the other just didnt have **** for a spark.

As another poster asked about the air box, no I havent gutted it out yet but is in the plan book. I was going to do it the other day when I done everything else but didnt have enough time to get to it.
And forgive my ignorance Ive been out of the loop a bit & some of the lingo has me confused, wasent sure what PEMS was? Took me bit just to figure out what you guys ment by KR, there was a couple others also but I cant recall at the moment.

[/quote]


I personally benefitted from it, ignoring the fact that I had one or two failing when hot, simply because I started with the older, weaker coils to begin with.[/quote]

Thats the other thing I have had alot of the GM packs fail so it makes me lery of them. For overall spark though they seem to be pretty decent.

Accel'* yellow version of the GM coils typically fail early. I know of two sets on this Forum that failed in under 30 days. And that'* out of 4 sets total ever run here that I'm aware of.

Taylor wires? We had a bad run of them, quite a few of us. Here'* 3 consecutive sets from me. One bad out of the box, two sets early failures:



I used to be a Taylor fan.

AC Delco coils don't have a bad rep here. They seem to last quite some time. The car I had them fail on was a 93 with original factory coils installed.