and I say they are full of it.
I noticed in the last year or so the fuel economy of my dad's Taurus (2001 Vulcan, 68k miles, purchased with 13k miles on the odometer) drop quite a bit, and this week we swapped cars for some maintenance work, I noticed some hesitation and misfire (minor) when idle.
Since we were in a discussion of spark plugs, and I've heard that most of these plugs don't last 90k or get horrible gas mileage at that time, and plugs siege if you don't take them out every 30k miles, I will go ahead and inspect them.
Glad that I did.
The left 3 were from the rear bank that had platinum side / ground electrode, and the right 3 were from the front bank that had platinum tip.
All of the platinum tips vanished, the gap grown from 0.044 in to 0.060-0.070 in, one seems to have a carbon trace (3rd from the right), all are slightly wet (ok, I just moved the car and have a bottle of Gumout Regane in the tank, so not a fair evaluation), and all have some minor rust on the shell.
I've never worked on an iron block so I don't know if rust is normal, but I'd expect some platinum should still be there if they say it should last 90k miles.
This photo is taken after a good wash and regap to 0.040-0.044 in, will try it out for a few drive and see if it improves the fuel economy, power, and smoothness, and in the worst case, Autolite has these plugs for 2.70 before rebates.
Let's find out.
I noticed in the last year or so the fuel economy of my dad's Taurus (2001 Vulcan, 68k miles, purchased with 13k miles on the odometer) drop quite a bit, and this week we swapped cars for some maintenance work, I noticed some hesitation and misfire (minor) when idle.
Since we were in a discussion of spark plugs, and I've heard that most of these plugs don't last 90k or get horrible gas mileage at that time, and plugs siege if you don't take them out every 30k miles, I will go ahead and inspect them.
Glad that I did.
The left 3 were from the rear bank that had platinum side / ground electrode, and the right 3 were from the front bank that had platinum tip.
All of the platinum tips vanished, the gap grown from 0.044 in to 0.060-0.070 in, one seems to have a carbon trace (3rd from the right), all are slightly wet (ok, I just moved the car and have a bottle of Gumout Regane in the tank, so not a fair evaluation), and all have some minor rust on the shell.
I've never worked on an iron block so I don't know if rust is normal, but I'd expect some platinum should still be there if they say it should last 90k miles.
This photo is taken after a good wash and regap to 0.040-0.044 in, will try it out for a few drive and see if it improves the fuel economy, power, and smoothness, and in the worst case, Autolite has these plugs for 2.70 before rebates.
Let's find out.
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