Is it easy to tell right away if these things are opening or not? I keep reading about people having problems with them, is it a night and day thing like the car wont run right at all if they arent opening?

 

There's always the grease trick but in my opinion, the ports could be opening on a pulse of exhaust pressure (on 86-88) or for other reasons on other years so the grease will be removed and wouldn't prove they're staying opened all the way while accelerating. I think the best way is to tie them open, if you don't see a big difference on hard acceleration, it most likely means they were opening by themself before you tied them open.

 

could you remove the actuators and then tie them open?



now lets talk about weight reduction

 

If you want to keep them open, you can remove the actuators. But if you tie them open, it will lose some low end torque. You could even eliminate the port valves (sorry no weight reduction here) but you have to remove the intake manifold to do that, and would lose some more low end torque and gain some power on high RPM. It also have some negative effect on fuel economy when cruising. If you remove the port valves completely you'll have to figure out a way of pluging up the holes on the intake manifold.

 

how do I find the ports to tie them open?

 

They are right above your exhaust manifold (or header), on either side of your AC&CV.

 

Just above the exhaust manifold, you can see the 2 actuators looking like cans with a rod going to the 5th and 6th port valves at each ends of the engine.

 

Sorry ILUVMY88CABRIO, I was writing the answer, the phone rang then I sent the post after you sent yours.