adamsdaddy
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adamsdaddy
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Okay that's embarrassing. 3rd plug is uh still in there. Maybe not drinking a beer while working on the Expy is the problem.
HEY! OP said no snarky comments.
GlennSullivan
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Yeah, hopfully you didn’t F-Up the new plug trying to screw it into the top of the old one, lol. Have another cold one and leave the rest of the plugs until tomorrow AM with coffee.
adamsdaddy
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I finished! Plugs were black with carbon. It idled very smoothly and I had fun zipping along until a Prius crawled in front of me.
This is the wife's car whereas mine has 293,000 and hit 0-60 in 11 seconds when new.
Now to try and get motivated to change the transmission filter.
This is the wife's car whereas mine has 293,000 and hit 0-60 in 11 seconds when new.
Now to try and get motivated to change the transmission filter.
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I wouldn't actually even call those black with carbon as it's only around the outer ring of the black metal part and that's fairly unimportant. The actual insulator and electro tip and ground look pretty clean on that with only a light whitish coating on it which is probably just additives in the gasoline.
That too is fairly unimportant with the most important thing about spark plugs that require them to need to be replaced would be gap erosion and or electrode wear.
It's always interesting to check the old plugs with a feeler gauge to see how much the gap has eroded versus when you put them in. When you get into the more expensive plugs this happens less because iridium and platinum don't erode as quickly but a lot of the plugs I use are only single Platinum so you will get some erosion versus double Platinum but still that's a key factor and also the tip of the electrode how it wears and sometimes the ground underneath how it becomes concave.
It is a little bit harder to tell now because you have to know what the tip looked like before or compare it to the exact same brand and style of new plug to see the shape because most of the plugs doubt are a fine tip plug or they have steps and tapers whereas just a few years ago the center electrode was just around cylinder like flat surface sticking up out of the insulator and it's amazing how much it will round off and recede as it wears away versus a new one.
So basically it's all about the electrodeware etc as opposed to having some carbon or a little bit of buildup.
If you have excessive buildup like some cars I've seen that will actually almost bridge or completely bridge the get together, THEN, you have far more problems than just needing spark plugs replaced and you have to address them or even get creative with types of plugs you use and even modifying the Gap like a J gap to try to Band-Aid that problem as long as you can.
