[PBFred]

I was told book time for changing the plugs is 6 hours. But headers should make it wayyyy easier. The stock exhaust manifold has metal heat shielding (kind of like a cage) that makes it super tough to get to most of the plugs.

Stick your head under there and find out. With the stock exhaust manifolds, you pretty much can't see the plugs, from the top or from the bottom. Long tube headers versus shorties shouldn't make a difference, it will just depend on how they were designed.

 

[PBFred]

A '97 has an OBD II computer (PCM). Which means that it has sensors that run to the cats. Unless you get the PCM tuned to not throw an error for missing cats, it will continue to throw one. It may even put the engine in "limp home" mode, but I'm not positive about that. And I'm not quite sure about all the things limp home mode does, except limit your power, but I'm not sure in what ways.

Did ya just take the cats off?

 

[PBFred]

no i just bought he car like that and where could i get the PCM tune

Was it throwing a code before the plug issues? Or did ya just buy it that way? If not, it may already be tuned to ignore the missing cats. I have a '94 with an OBD I PCM, so it doesn't have a connection to the cat, so I could easily be wrong about this too. But I think the sensors in the cats are temperature sensitive, so it may take a few miles before it will finally stop ignoring the "error" and throw a code.

Check out
www.pcmforless.com and
www.madtuner.com

The sites will give ya a decent amount of basic info about tuning. And if you have a laptop, you can buy a cable, then tell them all the mods to your car, and they will email you a tune you can load yourself. Plus, with a laptop and cable, you can do data logging of your car. You can go the other route in which you swap PCMs with them also. Check out the sites and you should have a decent understanding of it.