After running the car for a few minutes I quickly realized something was wrong. This was even more quickly confirmed via visual check of the leaking coolant from the intake plenum. Why you need external/internal coolant passages zig-zagging through the plenum runners and flange is beyond me, but that's besides the point.
I decided it was a good idea to pull the coil packs and check out the spark plugs as well. The engine had been upside down on a stand for a weekend, not to mention out of the car and not running for over a year. I'm sure the entire head was soaked in oil, including the plugs.
As it turns out there was actually standing water in the plug wells. This obviously concerned me as I was not sure where it came from. At first I thought somehow it may have leaked from inside the cylinder due to the unknown amount of coolant coming from the intake. It definitely wasn't coolant though as it was completely clear. It also looked relatively fresh. Maybe TDC Auto left my car outside in the rain and it collected without the hood on? The 28o z was always garaged and rarely even driven in the rain. The engine never left the garage after pulling it out. It also wasn't that long before pulling the engine that I changed out the plugs previously. I really don't know where the water came from and won't be able to confirm either way.
I cleaned out the ports with compressed air, blowing all the debris and water out before removing the plugs themselves.
I'm not really sure why I took this next picture, but it seems to be a blurry shot of the series one ignition chip on the aft plug cover from the drivers side.
The plugs are NGK BKR7EIX Iridium's. Before I ended up with these, I was having major issues in the 28o z with blowing out my spark at high boost (18# range). These are one level colder than stock as well as being the performance plug that NGK makes. After the oem ones, I switched to standard 7e's, and even with the decrease in temp they were still blowing out causing on/off loss of power to the point that the car would buck from full accel to not and back again during boost. The Iridium's worked well and are apparently also cleanable if needed.
For now I cleaned these and put them back in. As a side note I had some sputtering in second the other night after a quick run through first, shifting quickly to second. Slow rolls in all gears however seemed fine. Maybe the quick blast of high boost blew out the spark. Maybe there is still significant squatting between gear shifts and the tires hit hard enough to buck the car. Maybe I'm low on fuel and the fuel pickup ran lean.
I'll report back, but what do you guys think of the condition of these plugs? I think it's weird that they could work at high boost from a slow roll v high boost after launching out of first which makes me think it may be another issue entirely. 18psi is 18psi, right? They've been in the engine for over a year unused, and spent a weekend possibly submerged in oil while the engine was flipped upside down. Get new ones? Run it a while to burn off any coated oil and pull them to inspect again? I also couldn't find my gapper at the time so can't confirm if they've opened up. The Iridium's are relatively more expensive, but worth it if it fixed the issue.
I decided it was a good idea to pull the coil packs and check out the spark plugs as well. The engine had been upside down on a stand for a weekend, not to mention out of the car and not running for over a year. I'm sure the entire head was soaked in oil, including the plugs.
As it turns out there was actually standing water in the plug wells. This obviously concerned me as I was not sure where it came from. At first I thought somehow it may have leaked from inside the cylinder due to the unknown amount of coolant coming from the intake. It definitely wasn't coolant though as it was completely clear. It also looked relatively fresh. Maybe TDC Auto left my car outside in the rain and it collected without the hood on? The 28o z was always garaged and rarely even driven in the rain. The engine never left the garage after pulling it out. It also wasn't that long before pulling the engine that I changed out the plugs previously. I really don't know where the water came from and won't be able to confirm either way.
I cleaned out the ports with compressed air, blowing all the debris and water out before removing the plugs themselves.
I'm not really sure why I took this next picture, but it seems to be a blurry shot of the series one ignition chip on the aft plug cover from the drivers side.
The plugs are NGK BKR7EIX Iridium's. Before I ended up with these, I was having major issues in the 28o z with blowing out my spark at high boost (18# range). These are one level colder than stock as well as being the performance plug that NGK makes. After the oem ones, I switched to standard 7e's, and even with the decrease in temp they were still blowing out causing on/off loss of power to the point that the car would buck from full accel to not and back again during boost. The Iridium's worked well and are apparently also cleanable if needed.
For now I cleaned these and put them back in. As a side note I had some sputtering in second the other night after a quick run through first, shifting quickly to second. Slow rolls in all gears however seemed fine. Maybe the quick blast of high boost blew out the spark. Maybe there is still significant squatting between gear shifts and the tires hit hard enough to buck the car. Maybe I'm low on fuel and the fuel pickup ran lean.
I'll report back, but what do you guys think of the condition of these plugs? I think it's weird that they could work at high boost from a slow roll v high boost after launching out of first which makes me think it may be another issue entirely. 18psi is 18psi, right? They've been in the engine for over a year unused, and spent a weekend possibly submerged in oil while the engine was flipped upside down. Get new ones? Run it a while to burn off any coated oil and pull them to inspect again? I also couldn't find my gapper at the time so can't confirm if they've opened up. The Iridium's are relatively more expensive, but worth it if it fixed the issue.
Run them! I once fouled mine so bad on my Supra that the thing was only running on a couple of cylinders. Cleared the issue that was overfueling, drove the car on the highway, miss cleaned right up! Iridiums are awesome and can be put through hell. Drive them and see if they will clean up on their own IMO.
ReplyDeleteYes, Iridium's are awesome, they better be for 8$/plug. I used to run standard ones and they would be DEAD after about a week of daily driving. Glad yours powered thru, but I've been running these like this for the past week or so without a change so I ended up ordering a new set.
DeleteI read NGK's website and apparently you should go a heat range colder for every 75-1oo hp, so I actually ended up getting the bkr8eix iridium's. I'm planing on a 3 hr round trip ride on saturday, so we'll see how they go!