jesterean

I have an 88' GXL with just about 54K actual miles. I recently bought it from an auction and now that I have some money, I 'd like to spiff it up a bit. First, I took it to a Rotary mechanic and he got everything up to date and not I am wondering what's next. It has some body damage (a dented fender) and needs a paint job but I was thinking I should until after the winter. Any suggestions out there?
-jesterean

von

Keep it stock... Put a new cat on it. The bonez full cat looks good. The catco cat is good to and cheap. Replace the mufflers and put in a new filter. Might want to do some sort of performance filter to get rid of all that clunk. It wont give a noticable gain especially when temps get hot. Hot wash your engine bay and check for cracking rubber vacume hoses that you can replace. This is as fast as your car will go without sacraficing any kind of driving pleasure or emissions. Mabey 10-13rwp gain. Not to noticable when I was doing mine.

If you like taking stuff apart. You can put pineaple racing 6 port sleeves in. THey are 50$ and claim a couple hp and smoother excelleration by a hardly noticeable amount. Lighten your hood to Aluminum then buy a sticker.

mabey 1000$ total or whatever

Black91n/a

Most people would say that for power do the exhaust, then intake, then maybe a SAFC. As for exhaust you can go anywhere from true duals to just a cat back and everything in between, it's up to your budjet and emissions testing. As for the intake you can get a cone filter, a cold air box and a fresh air headlight cover, or do a CAI using modified piping form a Prelude. It'll run rich at this point and you'll need to lean it out to get the full potential out of the motor. If that's not enough, you can do the throttle body mod, port the intake manifolds, remove the emissions equipment, airpump, PS pump, AC and do pulleys. Also a light flywheel will free up some power and make the engine more responsive. You could also port the engine and give it a rebuild at the same time, but that'll be expensive and most people port the engine after it dies and needs rebuilding anyways. I'd reccomend getting some good tires and possibly going to a bigger size wheel/tire combo. Suspension work is a good idea, but it's very personal, good shocks are key though. You can get springs and shocks, or coilovers, and you can get bigger sway bars, polyurethane bushings, camber kits, and the list goes on.

Me, I'd rather catch up to people in the corners than in a straight line. But then again not everybody takes their cars to the track.

Syonyk

First, check his work.

Are the 6th ports moving freely? On the passenger's side of the engine, above the exhaust manifold/heat shields, there are two actuators (one on the front, one on the rear - they're otherwise identical). You should be able to push both of them easily. If not, you'll need to free the ports up (and Pineapple racing inserts are trivial to add when you do that).

Honestly, my suggestion would be to obtain a good metric toolkit (if you don't already have one) and start learning. They're nice cars to work on, and it's a LOT cheaper to do work yourself. Get a good metric socket set, a good set of metric wrenches, a tire iron, jack, 2 jackstands, and a torque wrench. You'll be set to do pretty much anything short of an engine rebuild.

Buy a copy of the Haynes manual, and download the Factory Service Manual (it's floating around a few places). Read, learn, do.

-=Russ=-

Scalliwag

The exhaust upgrade, the K&N styled cone air filter and a MSD 6A or 6AL ignition with some 8.8mm wires. Those will help in performance and not adversley effect fuel consumption either. The multi-spark ignition really works nice.
As far as the Pineapple sleeves you may as well have a set handy to install but wait until you need to pull the manifold off for something. Check for signs of fuel smell. At some point if they have not been replaced the fuel injector seals will get hard and leak. If and when they do there are a few more things you should do while you have all that off along with pulling the lower intake to put in the Pineapple sleeves.
Replace your vacuum and fuel lines. Check to see if the oil metering lines are brittle and replace them as well.
The manifold is not horrible to get off but it is enough trouble that you may as well take care of everything while you are in there. At least that is how I try to do things.

Another thing you can do is there are two vacuum ports that stick up on the intake side with rubber caps on them. One at a time take them off an attach a long enough hose to put to a bottle of water or water/alcohol mix. With the motor warm and at about 3500 RPM put the hose in the water until it starts to stall and pull it out until it steady's back. Do that a few times on each side.
This will burn off any and all carbon and possible help to avoid problems caused by carbon build up later. With 54k it should not be too bad (carbon wise) but I recommend doing that about every 7k to keep it clean. Since they are designed to burn regular motor oil it is a problem by design with them.