Tonydec

Guess what I spent the last 2 days doing?

I did my lower valve covers, 12 plugs and SAI valve and flush. Boy Oh Boy, a couple of those spark plugs had me questioning my sanity! I just figured as long as I was down there, might as well go for broke. My hands look like hamburger, and I can barely grip a pencil from using my fingers in so many tight spaces using force. Wouldn't have been so bad but I had to do it on my back.

Old plugs only had about 30k, which is what manual recommends, but is it realisic? They all had good color. Asking for the next time. Seems those platinum plugs should go longer.

I cleared my CEL since I changed the SAI valve, now for the dreaded drive cycles.

BS911

30k? Realistic? Heck no... I do mine every year at ~18k! HA! IMO, I don't believe plugs with 30k miles are as good as new plugs. And dist. caps and rotors with the same mileage are shot!

Droops83

30k for spark plugs is a good recommendation. Yeah they COULD go longer but you wouln't want to do that. Color is not the only thing to look for; wear on the spark plug is most important. Compare your old plugs to a new one. The new one's center electrode has perfectly sharp, squared off edges. The ones w/ 30k are no doubt rounded a bit. Also look at the space between the base of the center electrode and the ceramic insulation around it. A telltale sign of wear is that this space gets bigger. This is the main stuff to look for when changing plugs. Also, reading plugs isn't as conclusive as it was on older cars w/ leaded gas.

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Chris Andropoulos
Schneider Autohaus
Santa Barbara, CA

Tonydec

Caps and rotors are next. That's an easy one, I concentrated on the lower half first. The gaps still looked OK, but electrodes were rounding off. I changed them per the manual, but was curious.

Good response Chris.