Edmunds dealer partner, Bayway Leasing, is now offering transparent lease deals via these forums. Click here to see the latest vehicles!
Pontiac Bonneville
This discussion has been closed.
Popular New Cars
Popular Used Sedans
Popular Used SUVs
Popular Used Pickup Trucks
Popular Used Hatchbacks
Popular Used Minivans
Popular Used Coupes
Popular Used Wagons
Comments
We've had the GM rep look at--no response. We've had 2 files with General Motors and they finally agreed it's "a common design matter." Tried driving the Aurora, LeSabre and 2 other Bonnie's. All have the same noise.
We're leasing this car for 3 years. Hope they fix the noise problems by 2002.
Other high-end sedan owners who value their quiet GM ride need to speak up so that GM has to listen!
Good luck
Unless you go to extremes, a sway bar does not significantly effect ride comfort. Addco for years has promoted soft springs and stiff sway bars as a good compromise.
Intense01 and I have both upgrade our stock rear sway bars from 17 mill hollow to 1 inch solid. My wife did not notice a change in ride comfort at all. We just finished a 500 mile each way trip.
As far the function goes, www.addco.com has a good description, but basically it resists the paired wheels from having different compression of the suspension. If you turn sharply right, the car tends to lean left compressing the left suspension and expanding the right. The sway bar will resist this twist and try to keep the car level.
This also makes the car understeer a lot less.
Adding a sway bar to the SE should be easy. All the mount points should be their. You would need a bar, the frame clamps and bushings, as well as the endlinks. Saner could help you out, or maybe 1 or 2 of us have some stock bars to sell :-). I do not have a good feel for what size rear would be good for an SE, but would expect the stock SSEi bar to be about right. You can get frame clamps at the dealer, as well as endlinks and bushings. Bushings and endlinks we probably have, but I would go ahead and get new.
Hope that rambling helps.
BTW - any noticeable difference in the seating position on the Bonne vs LeSabre? I have heard that the Bonne seats pull your posterior down lower than the LeSabre - sport seating or some such thing. Although I am 6'0 tall, I enjoy setting my seat up as high as I can go for most commanding view. Very happy in that respect with Grand Marquis seating - I wonder about Bonne.
Turnpike Ken
It just goes on and on, and it's quite addictive.
See what we started...
The PVI does not seem to help as much on long hauls. I am going to talk to tech support tomorow and see what they have to say. The guy I talk to in canada says the canadan group only see returns on 2% of the unit, while the US group sees a 35% return rate. He attributes that to tech support. The canadian group works alot more with the user to fine tune things.
The other thing I am looking at is water injection. I have had few conversations with people who have done this and they have seen good results. One guy is testing an FPR with water injection and a 3.0 pulley. It looks like their are a couple kits that should work. ERL Aquamist and Spearco. The Spearco is cheaper, but I can;t find a GTP owner who has put one on yet. The ERL is fairly popular, but expensive. YOU cn also build one but it seems like a lot of work. I may try the Spearco unit with a 3.25 pulley and the composite throttle body spacer from RAT. The spacer makes it easy to attach the injector, just tap the spacer and you are all set, without having to make unrecoverable changes. I am meeting with an exhaust guy on tuesday to price him putting on a couple flowmaster 50 series delta flow mufflers. I am keeping the rest of the exhaust stock for the time being. I like the current tips and flowmaster recommend keeping the resonator, unles I was building a complete brand-new cat back setup.
In addition to the 3.25 pulley , short Gator Back SC belt , 185 therm. and the altered Thrasher cold air induction I run 94 octane Sunoco and NOS octane booster or 100 octane racing fuel (the better of the 2) .
Sway bar mod will most likely be next for me , sounds like your getting close to a muffler upgrade . I'm I right in thinking you changed brands of low restriction muffler's your looking at ? Good luck and happy SSEing . Doug
My dilemma now is should I take the K&N replacement filter out of my 93 SLE bonnie and put it in her 99 GP or keep it , hmm
I am leaving the resonator (for now) in place.
The GTP uses a different airbox, dmckeown managed to get the thrasher CAI to kind of fit. Lot's of duct tape, I think. I am still building mine.
ezrapon@att.net I'd like to see pics of everyone's car and mods if possible...except for the guy in the SE from last month who accused us of being muderers for liking speed.
Intake, exhaust and tranny.
Intake: From previous post you can see HP number on my SSEi with a 3.5 and a 9" cone filter and Intense01 with a 3.25 and stock intake. Very similar. With the cone my RPMs and boost spin up much faster, however at WOT with a warm engine the KRs kill overall performance.
Exhaust: Too much back pressure for instant throttle response under full boost. See later post.
Tranny - Some autotap readings and guesses implies a fair amount of power is being lost in the tranny during a punch. It settles out, but affect the response.
A few assumptions:
Less backpressure is good. - An engine runs stongest with no exhaust and no thing to block the air leaving the engine. A big pipe of each valve provides maximum power, assuming the PCM allows it.
Backpressure is most important at the valves. - The only place back pressure affects the engine is when the exhaust gas is trying to leave the engine. The engine could care less about downstream in the exhaust other than how it affects it at the valves.
All exhuast design is a compromise based on how the car is driven. - The exhuast for a dragster and a commuter car have to differ. For example: Volume matters more in a commuter than a dragster.
Exhaust is a series of pulses not a steady stream. - as each piston fire the valve open and release a jet of 1700 degree gases, then the valve closes and another opens. Hence a series of pulses.
Bigger, less restrictive does not always mean less effective backpressure. - At WOT bigger is better until a point, at lower rpms things differ.
Low RPMs - at low rpms a jet of gas escapes the valvle and heads towards the tail pipe at a large velocity. The valve closes. The gases continue by intertia to move toward the tail pipe. If there is not room for the gases to expand (bigger pipe) then the leaving gases will create a relative vacuum behind them at the valves. That will help suck the next burst of gas out of the cylinder NEGATIVE (kinda of) backpressure. With a bigger pipe, such as large headers, the exhuast gas expands when it leaves and does not create a vacuum, so the next pulse hit a mass of slower cooler air it has to move out of its way.
WOT - At wide open throttle things differ a bit, with a standard exhaust the engine is expelling gasses faster than they can move down the small pipe (an SC makes this worse). Here a bigger pipe helps to increase the flow rate. Above a certain size the air would expand too much, cool down and slow. Tough balance.
Meaning???
REducing restriction without increasing volume will help at all RPMs, big difference at low rpms.
Increasing volume will help early in the system will help at WOT but may hinder low end torque. Later in the system shoudl help both, as long as it is not carried to extremes.
Did that make any sense? Does not talk about volume, tone or frequency issues, but htose are personal. I will post my thoughts on that later.
PS Drone is caused by exhaust gases moving too slowly through a muffler or open area.
And to that black wolf in sheeps clothing down in St. Louie , welcome to the small pulley club , who say's size dosen't matter ? Has your brother inlaw seen those SSEi tailight's yet in a grudge match or are you waiting to do more mod's ? See ya Le Saber ! By the way , the Thrasher cold air kit looks pretty good under my hood , shows off the red K&N cone filter real nice . The kit cost a bit and the mod's took me a few hours to figure out and implement but I think I have the only 2000 SSEi currently running a cold air induction , even if it is not the absolute best like a hood scoop . Have fun , Doug
at all (solid axel). This SSEi has outstanding chasis dynamics and the potential for improvement (has anyone tested the stabilitrack and does in shut off when you defeat the traction control?)I think the front wheel drive platform has inheirent weaknesses that will never be overcome totally, but why is changing exhaust systems got to be so hard. I want to remove the resonator and go with twin mufflers (not nosiy). But with the talk of backpressure or lack of, I'm scared to touch it....I wish my son would borrow it and change a few things for me.
P.S. The day after the 3.4 went on I embarrassed the Lesabre... I vanquished him earlier when the temperature was down in the 50's. Like my old GN, these things appear to be highly sensitive to the surrounding environment. I'd like to see pics of any intake or exhaust work anyone has done.
Is this the norm for a Bonneville?
Thanks for any inputs or comments.
My concern with the resonator is volume and tone. So I am going a little step at a time.
The new muffler I hope to have on next week.
My exhuast desire are:
Eliminate the resonator or replace with an performance aftermarket.
Go to 2.5 piping from cat to split for the mufflers. Leave the 2.25 after the split.
RAT ported exhaust manifolds. I talked with them, the porting they do does not significantly increase the manifold volume, just smooth flow. If that is the case it should help performance without decreasing the post pulse vacuum.
We'll see what happens at some point.
I'm sorry I can't root for the Cardinals, but ever since the '67 World series, us Sox fans need to back a different team. It can't be the Mets or Yankees, so I guess it will have to be either the Giants or Oakland!
At first I did not go with the pinstripe, but after bringing it home and listening to my wife and son, and reading other posts in the beginning of this forum, I went for it and am glad I did. It does add something to the wide body panels.
I just got back from test driving my neighbor's 2000 Camaro SS. With standard tranny and over 300 horses, talk about a throwback. I really enjoyed driving it. It threw me back in my seat the way my T-Type did. I miss that.
I will try to get a picture of my CAI modification this week and send it to you , although it looks like rain till Wednesday around here and I don't drive the SSEi in the rain if I don't have too. I'll snag a digital camera out of a lab or something . Doug
Camshaft lobe lift on the stock L67 engine is listed at .258"/.255" (Intake/Exhaust). With the stock 1.6:1 roller rocker arms, this gives theoretical valve lift values of .413"/.408".
They make an aftermarket set of 1.8:1 roller rockers for the LS1 engine. If these will fit our heads, we should get valve lift of .465"/.459".
If these rockers will work on our engine, I would guess that the exhaust note would become 'crisper', and we'd gain a minimum of 10 horsepower. With improved intake and exhaust systems, I think the gains would be significantly higher.
I've searched high and low through the '00 LS1 and '00 L67 Helm manuals, and can't seem to verify if these rocker arms would be interchangeable. So, I am forced to do the next best thing. I have sent my girlfriend off to the Pontiac dealer to buy one an L67 and an LS1 rocker arm. If they are interchangeable, I plan to order a set of the 1.8:1 arms from Crane Cams.
Anyone have any thoughts?
After each mod, I'm having more torque steer issues... almost too much traction, i guess this is the nature of the beast... didn't seem so unpredictable in the 300 hp STS... better engineering in the caddy????
Thanks.
I guess we will always be the GTP step-children. I guess I'm the only guy who chose not to opt for the pin stripe. Still have not seen one in person up close.
As for the Thrasher CAI I think it looks better in the SSEi then in the Grand Prix because of the brace going over it in the GP . If anyone else wants to see the pictures post your E mail address