Very true.

So after completing my tune up my car feels fantastic. I will show some images below, but for the most part it would appear this car was well taken care of.

Oil change, both motor and transmission was simple. The only thing about the engine oil is there is a big cover to remove which has about 18 clips, not a big deal, just tedious. Got about 5.15 quarts out of the engine and about 4.05 out of the transmission.

The air filters were dirty as expected but easy to replace. The intake tubes were clean with no debris or anything on them.

The MAF's were also relatively clean. With how easy they were to clean off it wasn't a problem but when I sprayed em down only a minute amount of dark liquid came off. My car has the stock air filters (dry type) so that might have something to do with it (as I hear oiled, or over-oiled filters can cause MAF issues).

The intake side of the throttle body was plenty clean, as expected, but the backside was definitely gucked up.

I would not recommend using the MAF cleaner on the throttle body, it just isn't powerful enough. The TB cleaner worked well but I can see why it shouldnt be used on the MAF's themselves.

I did as recommended and unplugged the battery but left the TB's connected. I moved the butterfly valve all the way open and cleaned it thoroughly.

Intake plenum was pretty nasty too, a quick wipe of the rag with some MAF cleaner on it did the trick.

The spark plugs looked good, worn, but fine. No guck on them, no blister white, so everything was fine there, but I am still glad to have new ones.

So onto the results. Everything was pretty easy, moving wires and tubes and stuff to get to the spark plugs wasn't too bad and I did them one at a time to keep from getting confused. When I started my car for the first time it started real strong, revved to almost 2k RPM and held it, but after about 2 minutes the idle dropped down to about 750 and held solid. I went for a quick drive and the car felt pretty WOW. It ripped through the first couple of gears and felt real strong.

Now, my only "concern" is, my exhaust note sounds different. I have an aftermarket Magnaflow exhaust. It is really hard to explain, but my car now sounds less tuned like a Japanese motor and more beefy like a Z28 or something. I thought this might be caused by the air filter or something so I swapped the old filters back in, no difference.

Anyone have anything similar to this?

I mean, its not an issue,it still sounds great and the car isn't misfiring or anything and it feels amazing but the car definitely sounds different.

Anyways, if anyone has any thoughts on this I would like to hear about it.

Thanks.

_Michael

Nice job on all this Mike, I think i'm gonna have to get a look at mine here pretty quick and see whats going on, although my car only has 38,000 miles on it, and runs fine.....

Thanks.

The process itself is fairly straight-forward although the change in exhaust tone for me has me a little concerned.

Some people have been saying some anti-seize might have slipped onto the tip of the spark plug, although it's odd that my car runs fine but just has a tone change.

Anyone ever have an experience like this?

_Michael

No, that is puzzling to me also,, but it sounds like your car certainly runs at least as good, if not a tad better, crisper maybe?.... then it did, so hopefully its nothing to worry about...

Yeah I am not so worried about it since it runs so nice as I am curious as to what could have changed the tone of the exhaust.

What's even more weird is that it only occurs after a few minutes of driving from a cold start.

When I start it up in the morning it sounds like it did, tuned, and then after about roughly 5 minutes of driving I can hear it get a tad louder even if I am just cruising around, and then once I come to a stop and take of again it becomes that raspy tone.

It's as if a new ECU mapping takes over once its gone from the cold start to operating temperature and something about that (+/- fuel, +/- air) is causing the tone to change.

I wonder if an ECU flash is in order or if maybe the timing is off or something. I don't know, and none of my mechanic friends, Google, or anyone online seem to know what the heck could be going on.