MK19

Thought I'd post some Christmas cheer for all of you dreading your next plug change.

Just did mine.....nice Christams Eve job......music, a glass, and 4-5 hours in the garage.....alone.........

But here's the point; I've read much here about plug life limited to about 15k miles. Here is my recent experience;

Factory Beru Heat Range 6 plugs has 24k miles on them. Car is stock except for an Upsolute flash and ported headers. It gets run as a dailiy driver with full power runs and 3x digit red line runs fairly frequently each week. It's had 1 track day and gets more or less any premium gas. I started to think some of the variocam action was worse than normal, did experience a few part throttle stumbles/misses. It died on me once or twice when it hadn't before.......so I went for the plugs.

New plugs (Bosch fdr6ldc's) seem to have smoothed the idle and I've yet to notice any of the other symptoms mentioned above(except for the variocam stumble)..... so it is better for the new plugs for sure....but very subtle for sure.

But the Beru's I pulled out looked very good, gaps were near spec at say .035, in any other car I'd have said fine. They had a bit of carbon.....not uniform (probably due to clocking differences).

But I'd say they would have gone the 30k per OE service spec. And, I will move to no less than 20k plug changes and unless I feel problems....25k as a plug change interval. Of course if I'm in there....then it's a no brainer and I'll do them then. By the way.....no big mess on top of the intercoolers either....very cleen.

So don't over agonaize about that next plug change....catch it when you have a few spare hours and a few cold ones. Or when you are in there anyway.

By the way......one of you guys posted a nice step by step plug change proceedure and it really made it easy to just go at it.....reduced the "how's this thaing put together" learning curve a lot. So thanks a lot.

Have a happy and safe new year all. MK19

turbolou

Good post thanks for sharing Happy Holidays Lou

Shant Ohannessian

I wonder if changing pugs on the 996TT is easier than 993 C2? Merry xmas

MK19

I've done both 993 and the 996TT. I'd say they take about the same amount of time ...4-6 hours depending upon how well equiped you are and how hard you work (I'd bet a pro could bust 3 hours)......but the TT is much more staright forward. No gymnastics required as is on the 993....especially on that top, frony, passenger side plug (tough one for sure). And you have 12 plugs on the 993 vs. 6 here.
MK19

C DeVito

Good post. I also had mis fires at 25K with the Beru plugs and replaced them during the Thanksgiving weekend. The old plugs all looked fine under visual inspection but the replacement fixed the problem. It is a great job to get an understanding of how the car is put together. Just removing the bumper seemed like the hardest part requiing 2 people to slide off cleanly and refit. Other than that if you have the tools specified in the write up it is very easy. It is time consuming but worth it. It took me 6-7 hours but I also flushed the brake fluid while I had the wheels off.

Happy Holidays to all Rennlisters.

drh

Good job MK19!
That is the way to go about working on your car. It's rewarding to learn something new, and equally rewarding when you consider that you did not pay someone else's husband $600 to shove a set of plugs into your baby.