What's the best way to change them and will it take me a week to change them?

 

Wish I could help but the fourthgen cars are such a pain in the rear end. The damn windshield covers half the engine. I heard it litterally takes about 3 hours to do on a lt1 fourthgen. It wasn't too bad with my thirdgen hood room. If anything, just pull off whatever is in the way, its extra work but will probably prevent bloody knuckles. Also, try to get a swivel and everything extension you could find.

 

It sucks, but it can be done. The exstion and woobley is good advice, a box end wrench to fit the sparkplug socket helps too.

 

1. make sure you can fit under the car, car ramps work well

2. take off the alternator, 3 bolts, one wire connecter, and you have to loosen the belt, have someone help during this part

3. some plugs are best approached from the bottom, I had my dad help when I changed mine and what worked was him droping the rachet down from the top and me aligning it from the bottom

4. make sure your beer is cold

5. good luck, should take you about 3 hours your first time, now that ive done it once i feel like I could change the plugs in about an hour now

 

Do a search on the subject and youll find several good threads.

 

I do one at a time, that way if I get frustrated I quit and start another time.. no wire mixups either that way..

 

I dred this..good luck!!!

 

If you have skinny arms you can get all from the top maybe.

5 and 7 are best from the bottom, 5 will be hard to see, also check the #7 plug wire as it has to go through a nice 180 deg bend and can crack easily back there.

1 and 3 are easy. lots of room. From the top

2 and 4 can be a bear but you don't really need to remove the alternator if you can get your arms in there. from the top.

6 and 8 can be accessed from top or bottom. I found 8 from the bottom easier and 6 from the top. the stock manifold really make this area suck no matter which way you go at it. But skinny arms are good here too. Some people will tell you to remove the y-pipe but i was able to relax my arm enough to get it in there from the bottom.

This all takes me about 1.5 to 2 hours. with an extra deep 5/8 spark plug socketwith a ratchet, and a standard length with 5/8 wrench.

Now if you have headers its a whole new ball game.

With my Mac headers I can now change all plugs from the top without removing anything in about an hour.

 

I'm in the same boat as you man. I suggest reading up on some threads and set up a game plan in advance. Maybe get under the hood and find out which routes you can take, etc. so that way once you're underway you won't have any road blocks.

 

I guess I'm well off from par for the course on the ol' spark plug changing in less then 3 hours.

My first time out I started at about 11AM, and pulled my car off the ramps at 9PM. Now, before you go thinking I'm a spastic orangutan, I set about the job calm, cool, collected and prepared for the worse -and remained as such the entire time. I also ate 2 meals, talked and played around quite a bit.

Had I pushed the first time through, I might have been able to do it in half the time -but with a heck of a lot worse disposition about the task after the fact.

The one tip that worked best for me;
Lay a blanket across the engine bay, and lay across it feet off the drivers side, to get the hard passenger plugs.