PSA: Change your plugs
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The other day I changed my oil and then headed over to a friends house for a visit to see how his maple syrup season was going.
Heading home my car started running on 3 cylinders. That's a weird thing to happen from changing the oil. Drove it home and diagnosing the problem was a bad coil was straightforward. I replaced the coil the next day once the parts store was open.
I figured while I was at it I'd take a peek at the plugs. I know they were brand new. I mean I changed them when I got the car and that was only... um.. 130 000 kms ago. Oh. I guess you're supposed to change those occasionally .
I guess Toyota once again lives up to it's reputation of taking abuse. I measured one of the old plugs and it's gapped at .07. Spec is .043.
Kitten says don't forget to change your plugs!
Thanks for reading.
i
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@ibRAD I change at 20k miles...its overkill but its just $40 every 8-12 months...
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@ibRAD I'm working on it! The spark plugs and coils should arrive tomorrow. The car has >288,000 kms on the clock, and I don't know when it had the plugs replaced. I'm also doing injectors and fuel filter because reasons.
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@ibRAD I... don't currently have any spark plugs.
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@ibRAD Yep, every once in while worth the $30. If only to learn they're wet and injectors are dripping...
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I am told that my Hemi engine has 16 spark plugs.
The B-36 Peacemaker had 336 spark plugs and they carried the replacement plugs to the aircraft in 5-gallon buckets.
Did you notice any difference in performance with the new plugs?
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@ibRAD I changed the plugs (5) in my Volvo last fall. Old ones didn’t look terrible but it completely fixed the peculiar slight bogging it had at about 1800 RPM.
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@ibRAD Had the shop change mine (and the coils) before I left Texas ~18,000 miles ago (no time to do it myself in the rush of moving). Precious metal plugs so they should be good for a long time still.
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@Rusty-Vandura 336 is a lot of plugs to change! I'll see if there's any performance improvement tomorrow I guess. I don't expect any, but I won't complain if there is.
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@ibRAD I quickly ran to my car in order to rectify this issue and to my bewilderment I found 0 spark plugs.
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@ibRAD I replaced the spark plugs in my sister's Civic a few months ago and it made a huge difference in performance. The engine is much less prone to bogging down at low rpms now. I think I may have already changed the spark plugs in my Thunderbird twice... Once to tune up the engine, and once again after that failed to solve the problem and the engine fouled up the new plugs already...
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@ibRAD said in PSA: Change your plugs:
@Rusty-Vandura 336 is a lot of plugs to change! I'll see if there's any performance improvement tomorrow I guess. I don't expect any, but I won't complain if there is.
And they changed the plugs after every mission. Five gallons of spark plugs would be very heavy.
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@Rusty-Vandura After driving in to work this morning I think it revs more freely now. Might be psychological but for the 15 bucks, invested, who cares! That's about what it costs me to drive to work and back these days.
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@aremmes said in PSA: Change your plugs:
@ibRAD I'm working on it! The spark plugs and coils should arrive tomorrow. The car has >288,000 kms on the clock, and I don't know when it had the plugs replaced. I'm also doing injectors and fuel filter because reasons.
300k on the original plugs! Impressive.
I noticed when I changed the plugs on mine that 3 of 4 coils were factory, and the one I had replaced was aftermarket. If those were the original coils, not bad- 438k and counting!
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@ibRAD said in PSA: Change your plugs:
@Rusty-Vandura After driving in to work this morning I think it revs more freely now. Might be psychological but for the 15 bucks, invested, who cares! That's about what it costs me to drive to work and back these days.
It's about six dollars for me. Per day. What are you driving?
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@Rusty-Vandura Echo hatchback, but it's a 140kms round trip!
If I did that in your truck (or mine) it would be 50 bucks.
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@ibRAD Things I have no interest in: changing my plugs again. The ones at the back are hell on wheels. Strangely, this is the easier one:
Anyway, they were going strong at 140,000km so I figure these ones can damn well take me to 280.
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@Smallbear Much more difficult than the 15 mins work on the Echo! What vehicle is that? Bonus points for going through the steering ujoint!
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@ibRAD My Colorado. I'm very GLAD GM crammed the 5.3 in it, but it does come with side effects. That engine bay was never designed for a V engine of any kind, never mind a V8.
And yeah, believe it or not the side that looks more open in this picture... isn't. Partly because the access hole in the fender isn't as big, partly because it's harder to thread your hand through A/C lines than brake lines.
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@Smallbear That looks fun! If its any consolation I bet the accessory drive belt is easier to change on that than on the Echo.
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@ibRAD Quite likely. Never done it though... but something's squeaking (probably tensioner) so I'll have to mess with it sooner or later.
At which point I'll be switching to electric fans and making it even simpler.
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@ibRAD said in PSA: Change your plugs:
@Rusty-Vandura Echo hatchback, but it's a 140kms round trip!
If I did that in your truck (or mine) it would be 50 bucks.
My Aspen is not cheap to drive. But gosh, I do love to drive it. I could've spent more on a car, but I could not have bought a car I'd love driving more.
