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Plugs of Death: Don't let this happen to you or R u mental or what?!

Please save your guffaws and well duhs till the end.

In my 1st post as an newbie I asked for help w/a bizarre engine sputtering problem: http://bbs.legacycentral.org/viewtopic.php?t=34740

Help me, help me, I'm a newbie and my subaru is weirding out...I don't know what to do.

Ok, many members threw their hats in the ring and came up w/some good advice, which I hadn't been able to follow thru on w/time constraints.

I hadn't changed plugs in a while and as it happened I had just bought a new set of ngk's before the trouble started.

So I go to change them out. I've got 3 down and 1 to go and 10 min. before I have to go to work. Of course you know the last plug I'm changing is the boo-hiss plug closest to the steering wheel. No magnet, no vacuum hosing, can't find my grabby tool anywhere so there's nothing to get it out w/. I almost sneak it out not once but twice w/the little piece of hose of the overflow reservoir, but of course it drops off. Totally annoyed, I thread the plug back in and head off to work.

Now the car's even worse. What the heck?! Day 2 and I pull out all the plugs again to check the gap. Finally I find my magnet and pull out the plug and see this:

http://home.comcast.net/~vballer23/plugsofdeath.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~vballer23/plugsofdeath2.jpg

If my plugs could've unthreaded themselves and knocked me in the head I'm sure they would've.

Why the boo-hiss plug is black as opposed to ashy white I have no idea, but those are some sick and sorry looking plugs, that's for sure. Happy to say once I got the boo-hiss plug swapped out everything was fine. Problem solved.

The moral of the story: Don't let this happen to you, and obviously you won't. I'm sure most of you are questioning my sanity right now. I know I am.

If you have a mysterious loss of power type problem I would say check the wires and plugs 1st unless you have a definite maybe that it's something else.

Plugs are so cheap for these, that I change them quite often.

Iron monkey: That having been said, it's not really a matter of money, I'm guessing much time slipped by w/o me realizing that my plugs were that far gone. (And I've never seen plugs so gone in my life!)

Next up is magnecor wires. Expensive or not it's worth it to me to have reliable components in my car. From what they say 1 set of magnecors is all you need. Well worth the extra money to me, as well as the security of knowing that you've got the issue of possible wire arcing covered.

Found the same messed up looking plugs in an EJ22t that I took apart a couple of weeks ago. The plugs were all in different states of decay and had different coloured deposits on them.

A leak down test of the engine showed that the cylinder with the plug covered in heavy deposits of black soot was leaking by 40% from the piston rings.

Apparently the whiteish yellow deposit is from a cylinder runing properly or maybe a little lean.

subaru_whoohoo! wrote:Next up is magnecor wires. Expensive or not it's worth it to me to have reliable components in my car. From what they say 1 set of magnecors is all you need. Well worth the extra money to me, as well as the security of knowing that you've got the issue of possible wire arcing covered.

Mmmm not so. I ended up replacing the magnecors around Christmas because I was getting some bad performance. I'm not sure of the mileage on the wires(bought car from DLC 3 years ago) but they went bad. I had 8mm wires. I plan to make wires a yearly item.

Magnecor wires have a lifetime warranty, so unless there was a problem with the contacts or the boots I believe they would replace your wires free of charge.

hmm I see. I guess I will send them in.

vrg3 wrote:Magnecor wires have a lifetime warranty, so unless there was a problem with the contacts or the boots I believe they would replace your wires free of charge.

Yup, that's why I picked up a used set for $45 2 years ago for my wife's car. If they go "bad" I'll just give them a call for another set. It's rare that plug wires go bad vs. the plugs which actually see the abuse of the cylinder contaminants (sp?).