I'm referring to the heat shield over the spark plugs, not the one wrapping along the bumper cover.

I did it the first time without removing the wheels, but last time I replaced the spark plug tubes while I was at it and found the angle was better without the wheel.

 

Ah of course!

I actually did the same thing a couple of weeks ago with the coils as I replaced them with everything still basically on the car.

 

That's the way I found it.


For sure this can be done without removing everything I did but I had to address the loose bolt issue on the bumperette bracket so the bumper had to come off. Once it was off the rest was a simple why the heck not just remove them too...........too easy not to. Besides everything is spic-n-span inside and out now and yes I was curious how things looked under the bumper too. Bet I get it all off in 30 minutes or less now. Thanks for the cudos!

 

It's a great exercise to remove the bumpers, exhaust etc... Next time you know more than just doing spark plugs... The car is just very easy to work on.

 

The first time I did it by just removing the coil pack shields. It was a slow process.

Next time, the mufflers came out, quicker.

Last time, even faster was removing the bumper and muffler heat shields.

Of course, all the effort to get the mufflers out, bumpers, and heat shields probably equals the time it takes to fiddle with wrenches and stuff... but doing all that stuff makes taking the spark plug part of it seem like a cakewalk.

 

At least the engine doesn't have to be partially dropped to change the rear plugs like the old Chevy Vega V6 did!

 

I drove my car onto a drive-on lift and replaced my plugs after removing only the mufflers.
It took an entire afternoon though.
That being said, removing the mufflers was a big pain and I would take the wheels off and use a chassis lift if I needed to do it again. I've had my muffler bypass pipes on since, which of course makes working under there much easier.