I am planning on removing most/all of my emissions equipment after passing the test. I will remove my airpump and have a straight pipe so there will be pretty much no way to activate the ports (besides electrically...but I suck at wiring). Should I pay the $50 for pineapple racing sleeve inserts and wire them open or just remove them completely? What would yield the most performance with the least loss in low end/fuel economy.

 

You can still activate them by exhaust backpressure. The trick will be to get the pickup tube right, so your hollow exhaust system can still build pressure to send to the actuators. Racingbeat uses a curved small diameter tube on their presilencers (PN 16405), but they use a simple piece of straight tube on their true dual header (PN 16128). I've seen other headers that have similar pickup tubes welded on, but I think they were custom.

The bottom line is that you will lose bottom end and possibly fuel economy if you do not get the ports to open properly. The pineapple sleeves have an unconfirmed 8hp gain at high rpm, but also have a reputation for breaking loose inside the port. Removing the sleeves altogether would likely end up with a similar tiny hp gain simply due to the path being freed up some. None of this will help your bottom end power. Since you spend much of the time at low rpms and not redline, it makes little sense to sacrifice what little bottom end there is.

 

the inserts sometimes fall into the engine.

 

Either way you are going to lose the low end.

Do whatever is necessary to make the ports work. Just put the air pump back on and use a solenoid to activate via an RPM switch.

You could get really simple and just an RPM switch with a big solenoid on each port.