As anyone done their spark plugs yet? Any special tricks? I know the 4.6 engines had trouble with insulators breaking off in the head. My car has 16000 miles, 850 of them at high rpm so I think it might be time. What brands other than Motorcraft are available for our engines?
Steve

 

I don't think you need to change plugs at 16k I might be wrong.

 

When running 7500 rpm over 850 track miles it might not be a bad idea. A broken electrode or insulator shell can make a real mess in a cylinder. For a street only car I agree that 60000 miles is probably fine. I am gonna see what Bosch has for our cars.
Steve

 

I didn't know that , I guess you learn something new every day.

 

This is a great question.

My fully track prepped HRC Odyssey (LOL) had it's first scheduled tune-up at 105,000 miles. I was very skeptical that the plugs could last that long but they did. In fact after the tune-up I thought it ran rougher.

Anyway I think the race teams replace their plugs before every qualifying run and I doubt they go 850 track miles on them. I think we need some advice on this from Ford. All of those revs above 7,000 put a lot of additional stress on the engine and I'm sure that includes spark plugs.

 

Are the factory ones Iridium? If they are, regardless of how many track miles I put on the car, I won't think of changing them at less than 60k miles unless the maintenance schedule says otherwise. The race teams are probably using copper because they supposedly perform better, they just do not have the longevity of iridiums and the supposed performance advantage is so small that it is irrelevant for a non race car. Seriously, I have never heard of anyone changing plugs more quickly because of track days but this is coming from the Subaru and M3 world where everyone runs platinums and iridiums. Most research I have seen suggest iridiums can really go over a 100k miles.

 

I don't know if they are iridium plugs or not. Guess I shouldn't worry so much but if I'm gonna do a plug check I might as well put new plugs in.
Stev

 

As far as I know most of the Grand-Am teams are not changing them all weekend at the races. I would think some use them for several races. I only saw two teams even messing with them, one was a complete engine swap and one team was looking for a problem that turned out to be a loose ground.

I think 16K is a little overkill unless you are worried about 1/100's of a second lap time. I was told if you are running your car mainly as a track car once every year or two but then only if you are looking at laps times like I memtioned.

I'm not sure these plugs are Iridium, I think they are Platinum with a Copper core. That is going by the part number SP519 which is CYFS12Y Motorcraft number. I have not checked for sure to see if this number is correct.

CYFS12Y
Y would be the plug characteristic, small less than .7mm finewire center electrode with Platinum Copper core ground electrode.

There should be nothing special about replacing them but use anti-seize on the threads.

 

Thanks YB
Not worried about lap time as much as reliability. Thank s for the info and looking up the PN. I will buy asset and look at #1 & #8, if the look good I will leave them, if not I can change them and maybe my tune if they show lean, rich or detonation. None of which I really think is the case.
Steve

 

Well, I spoke too soon. I pulled the plugs today and they were kind of dirty. I am sure they would clean up well for my purposes but I am going to replace them anyway. My car only has 4500 miles on it but most were on track, I still thing for a non-tracked car 60,000 would be no problem.

Also since it says Iridium right on the plug that is the material they are made of. The correct Motorcraft number is CYFS12Y.

 

Scott, This may be because trackey changes air and fuel intake. What do you think. Do you think trackey could play a part in why your plugs look like your burning rich alittle bit.

 

I am no expert but I read these as having more of a ash deposit (light to medium brown) so oil deposit not running rich. Maybe a engine builder here could tell different. The buildup on the outside of the side electrode was fairly thick. The center electrode at the very tip was not too bad.

This would make sense since my car does burn A LOT of oil but not so much that it was still wet like a bad ring.

 

How much is A LOT of oil. How offten do you need to add oil?? Also, is it the same if you do not use trackey??
Just trying to understand why a new car would use so much oil.

 

It burns less then some people have reported but I can use 1/2 to one quart on a single track day. I do not drive it enough on the street to get a good idea how much under normal driving. I have not seen a difference with this depending on the key used.

I do not think track key has a lot to do with anything. That is my opinion and based on nothing more then seat of the pants. The only reason I use it is to stop throwing the misfire codes on track. If anything I see the same or even a little better milage on track with the red key. When I do drive on the street I still use the silver key.

 

Yellow Boss, my plugs look exactly like yours, I have never seen this type of heavy Red tint on plugs before. 3,000 miles with about 1 qt oil usage, 1 track day and 2 autocrosses.

 

I change mine yesterday
23k miles, CAI and SCT tune
here's #8.....they look pretty much the same