Cavero

Same here, not worth taking the chance as far as I'm concerned. I've got 95k on my car and the E3's are my 3rd set of plugs. I usually change them every 40k. The only time I ever needed to change them was when the 2nd set were fouled. I'd start the car long enough to pull it out of the garage or put it back in. Not good for it. I push the car in/out by hand now.

m05fastbackGT

As long as you put high temp nickel anti-seize on the ground straps, they shouldn't seize up.. However I would probably change them every 40-50k miles just to be on the safe side anyhow..

Is this your first or second set of E3's ? If your plugs are fouling at 40k miles, IMO the E3's would appear to have a short life expectancy for a platinum based spark plug when compared to the factory motorcrap plugs

Cavero

Yeah sorry that wasn't all that clear the way I said it. The set I'm on now are my 1st set of E3 plugs. The set that fouled were motorcraft. Towards the end of the 2nd motorcraft plugs, the car barely got driven for a year and I kept moving it in and out of the garage to work on stuff without letting it get up to temperature. Add to that I was running my race tune around then (ran pretty rich) and it was inevitable.

m05fastbackGT

Thanks for clarifying.. So in your honest opinion, do you think the reason the motorcraft plugs fouled at around 40k was due from your car barely being driven for a year and also from just moving it in and out of the garage without letting it get up to operating temperature ? If those were the factors involved, then you can't really fault the spark plugs themselves for fouling out prematurely

Cavero

Yeah, but I never faulted the plugs themselves, I just said that was the only time I had to change them b/c they needed to be replaced before the 100K.

m05fastbackGT

Gotcha, so thanks for clarifying once again..

goldenpony

Incidentally, I just ordered a set of Champion 7989 plugs. Best price I found was through
Rock Auto. $20 cheaper than Amazon even including shipping.

m05fastbackGT

Good deal indeed

goldenpony

Well, worked all afternoon changing plugs in my '06 GT 'vert. The old plugs were Champions (#7989). Even though I installed them using nickel anti size- several of them were still quite hard to remove. But since they were one piece Champions, they came out in one piece. This set had 60K miles on them. I was fairly surprised that the gap on the old plugs had opened up quite a bit.
Installed the new Champions with a gap of .044" using a little graphite on the threads, and nickel anti-size on the "barrel" of the plugs. Torqued them to 25 ft/lbs.
The old girl runs like a new pony.

m05fastbackGT

Glad to know everything turned out well and didn't run into any issues