Been a busy few months, got a lot done with my STS. Added magnaflow mufflers with 2003+ northstar tips. Excuse the poor photo, my phone isn't the greatest at nighttime photos. Why they reverted to the square tips from 98-02 is beyond me. These look so much better. The magnaflows have such an unreal noise to them backed to this car. Ill be sure to get a few drive by videos and something through a tunnel to truly show the 300 hp symphony of a northstar. I had the exhaust shop space the tips 1/2" further out than factory. I think it looks better that way and its a subtle mod that separates my STS from the rest.
This photo also shows off the LED reverse/license plate lights I added. Not a fan of them on the inside of my vehicle but I love the look of the crisp white light they give off for exterior lighting. Had to add resistors to the license plate lights to stop them from flickering but they're well worth it. Not the only lighting upgrade I've done to this car, finally added HID's in my fogs as well as my low beams. Really modernizes looking at this car at night.
Then right around my birthday
Headgaskets... Great. I actually put 1000 KM on this thing with blown headgaskets. Full James Bond smokescreen when cold. The motor hydrolocked overnight twice on me. Got a rental at that point. Pulled all the plugs, cranked it, reassembled and drove it the 200km to Northstar Performance. Despite hydrolocking twice it didnt damage any of the rotating assembly. Block got studded and resealed, new TCC solenoid as preventative maintenance and they found a problem with my flexplate. 2750 dollars well spent, would totally recommend to anyone who is having northstar issues. They re-installed a bunch of missing trim/washers from their own spare parts and corrected my trans shift cable all without charging extra. This car has been running better than ever since I got it back from them.
I added siriusXM as well and tried to do as clean of an install as possible. Hid the wiring and mounted the receiver in the cubby infront of the shifter. Lid still closes, pretty stealth install that puts a smile on my face.
Just a nice picture of it. With the headgaskets out of the way I'm looking forward to a good few years of ownership out of this thing. Like I said in my introduction thread I want to add a Bonneville GXP strut tower bar and replace some of the suspension bushings with polyurethane. Northstar Performance have released a performance front engine mount that I'm really interested in. I might install it over the winter to see the difference vs factory. I will need to put in a wheel bearing soon enough but I just need a weekend off work to get that done. Thanks for reading this far, hopefully you don't mind seeing a Cadillac in this poncho forum but its still quite similar to the GXP's.
