New Bonneville owner looking for suggestions.
 

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 shit. 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's yet, but Rogue's sounds good. Mine sounds like that punk kid without exhaust. :twisted: 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's fenderwell intake system. The 2000+ body's 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 s*** 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.

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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's 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's 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's 3 consecutive sets from me. One bad out of the box, two sets early failures:

Attachment 65140

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.

I could see why your not fond of the Taylors than.
I had several problems with the coil packs on my last car 96 Grand Am. I went through two differnt sets in just three years. And if it was a hot day out you didnt go for long trips unless you wonted to get stuck for awhile. Every other car my mom has had over the last few years weve had to replace the coils in for the same problems, but granted most of them have been early to mid 90's cars so I may be jumping the gun here.

Do one of the 3" downpipes from the right side of the engine (Rear on the FWD) to a magnaflow hi-flow catalytic convertor, to 3" stainless pipe all the way back, keep the resonator, remove the u-bend in the pipe near the front to increase flow, the mufflers, magnaflow.. do a pulley conversion to a 3.4", cool air induction VIA fenderwell, there's alot of stuff you can do with these cars, even when they're n/a like mine

either way.. KEEP THE RESONATOR (brother recently did the same setup on his 04 Monte Supercharged) and it sounds like absolute crap because of the fact he took off the resonator and it rattles now , the whole exhaust system..

If you were around a little earlier, my brother was selling an extra 3.4" pulley that he got shipped on accident and didn't send back, but VPTruman picked that up already.. had for $75, whole thing, pulley, hub.

also, looks like you're relatively new here.. Welcome to the obsession, trust me.. once you're here, it's quite difficult to get away.. i've only been here a few short months, but i find myself obsessed with BC more and more every new day, haha

Eric, Bonnevilles don't have a U-bend.

Ha Ha, you don't even know yet I can get pretty carried away with things. You should ask my wife about my old car. It was a 92 RS Camaro simply known as the other Bi#** to her. Scared the hell out of her & many friends with it. Never ran it on the drag strip but it would hang right beside the 2000 & newer Vette on the stright & easly pass them up in the twisties . I had it up to 160mph several times with room to go more, just not enough balls for it. And the sad part was it was a TBI 305 with over 130;000mi on it. Granted I done a good bit of tweeking to the car, but for the way it ran for what I done to it was unreal.

Now that Ive gotten a bit older though the Bonnie suites my taste just fine to make a nice sleeper out of.

In tech info at the top of the site there is lingo explanation,PEM is ported exhaust manifold,Willwren wont steer you wrong he is the captain of the ship.Ive never had a problem with any AC DELCO coil owning 3 gm.

I personally don't have an opinion on which aftermarket muffler to use, but since you mentioned that you are a fan of Flowmaster and nobody has mentioned it yet, many here have the Flowmaster 80 as used in the F-body cars and are quite happy with them.

There are also those here that believe you do not need to increase your exhaust diameter unless you are planning some major flow improvements up front also. IMO, limit your back end exhaust improvements to a hi-flow magnaflow cat and the Flowmaster 80 muffler or similar and use that extra money to get Ported Exhaust Manifolds (PEMs).

As has been said here before, it takes a lot of up front improvements before you will outflow your stock exhaust (which is stainless BTW) and you can actually hurt output by decreasing exhaust velocity.

Here is an in car clip of my flowmaster 80, though it is a NA your L67 will sound almost identical except there will be whine. http://media.putfile.com/in-car-exhaust-79

Here is my car idling.

http://media.putfile.com/exhaust286

Sounds like a V8 at idle =P. If you put a custom exhaust on, keep the resonator! It doesn't sound nearly as good, sounds kind of ricey without it almost. My car has a resonator.

his will also sound a bit different due to the different configuration, F-body style, vs 2 strought through mufflers

right...forgot about that...

VigCS, sounds pretty good. Correct me if Im wrong the 80 series is a 2 chamber crossflow right? I would like to stay with the duel mufflers verses the crossflow but havent decided for sure yet. As for the resonator I think I will be leaving it in cause I cant stand that ricer sound. Too nice of of car to have it sounding like some POS kids toy.
I had to order a new front lower engine mount today, old ons pretty sloppy. And I also need to replace the oil pressure sending unit. My wife came to pick me up from work tonight & it was diveing back & forth from about 45 to 0 than back again. Checked the oil just incase & everythings fine there so I would assume the sender has gone bad. Damn eletric gages, never have trusted them. Can anyone point me in the right direction of the location of the sender? Ive not had much chance to look yet.

Im planning to gut out the air box tommrow as well & see what happens. Man this car has me wonting to do all kinds of things.
Wich that reminds me dose anyone make a spring set for these cars. I wouldent mind dropping it about 1 to 1 1/2 inches & going to a slightlety lower profile tire. Thinking about a 235/45-17 or mabey a 40 series max. I dont wont it to look slamed but just set it off a bit from stock.

Ya it's a crossflow - I forgot that the 00+ SSEi's have dual mufflers.

you're kidding me? i could've sworn they had one. .

i feel dumber than shit now

that is for the W body only, we are H's

I'm pretty sure no one makes lowering springs specifically for Bonnevilles. A few members on this site have experimented with kits designed for other cars I believe, but they may cause problems with other parts of the suspension due to an altered stance. The stock springs also have a progressive rate which means that they can't simply be cut shorter as I understand it. Maybe someone can give some more details, but to make a long story short, there are no kits I know of.

Well I gutted out the air box today, the SC is much more noticeable now .When you hit the gas it has a very distinct sound. It also seames to respond a bit better, but wont know for sure until I go for a ride.

Ya the springs arnt a big thing just more of a thought. Ive lowered more than enough of my fair share of cars though so mabey its just time to ride high for once ;) Most of the cars Ive done by cutting a couple coils & never had any problems, but Im not about to do it with this car. It will get driven by my wife more than me anyhow & she dosent have the knack for driving a lowered car. Every hole, bump, & small animal seam to find there way to her when riding low.