hi everyone. i hope no-one beats me up for this but i would appreciate your input. i bought my 1995 gle 2 years ago @ 60,000 miles. i now have 111,000 miles on it and am trying to be "good" to my max and keep up with scheduled preventive maintenance. i read in the maintenance "sticky" that for spark plugs, every 60k miles is the time. i did the rotors, brakes, air filter & fuel filter but have no cash this month to replace the plugs and wondered how long any of you have gone on the same plugs. am i playing with fire by not changing them right now? the car runs like a top with no problems. am i asking for trouble?
thanks in advance for your honest advice,
maury

 

As long as the car is running fine, don't worry about it right now. Do it as part of the 120K service.

 

thanks! i feel better now
maury

 

I believe on some cars, it is a 100,000 mile scheduled maintenance item.

 

The 2002 Toyota RAV4 has a new 4-cylinder engine which uses iridium-tipped spark plugs. The replacement interval is 120K miles!

 

Would it also be a 120k mile replacement interval if we put NGK Iridium IX plugs in our engines instead of the platinums?

 

That depends on whose replacement interval you care to use. Nissan says 60K miles. Toyota says 120K miles.

Would Nissan stretch the replacement interval if the plugs were the new iridium type? I don't know. Perhaps the 2002 Altima and Maxima 3.5 liter engine use iridiums.

The trade press voices some concern about whether spark plugs which have been undisturbed for more than 100K miles will come out without damaging the aluminum cylinder head's threads. I think they will come out okay if the factory used an anti-seize compound.

 

And if you have certain mods like a supercharger or NOS, you may want to change it more often as the plugs play an even more important role.

-V

btw, Granted it was an iron head, but the plugs came out of my 4cyl ranger fine after 125,000 miles. Since they were standard plugs and not even platinum tipped, they were looking very sad to say the least. The center conductor was almost down to the insulation!

 

You should also be aware that your engine is very sensitive to spark plugs. I would say go with the original plugs for your next go round.

Although there are a number of us not running the stock NGK's, it seems you lose a small bit of power on the low end and its noticed right away.

I am running Bosch Platinum and I felt a little drop in the low end but gained about an extra 30 miles to the tank.

 

http://www.nissannews.com/nissan/pro.../frameset.html

This site describes the 2002 Maxima ...
Double platinum-tipped spark plugs give Maxima a 100,000-mile tune-up interval ...

 

I know for certain that Nissan doesn't use anti-sieze compound and neither does Ford.

On my 99, I am going to change plugs at 40k and use anti-sieze, and then revert back to 60k intervals.

Another concern in general about plugs is they are often over tightened from the factory. I've yet to service a new vehicle (2 Mercurys, 3 Nissans) that the plugs weren't difficult to extract, even after warming up the car a little bit to "loosen up" the grip of the heads on the plugs. I'm sure age/wear plays a role in their being tighter as well, but here's an experience of mine on a new car:

A prime example is my mom's new Grand Marquis with the 4.6L V-8 engine. Ford switched to "double-tipped" Motorcraft platinum plugs a couple of years ago to claim the "100k" maintenance tune-up. This motor was designed around and for copper plugs and many at crownvic.net report a noticeable increase in power just by switching them out. I went to extract these plugs at a mere 200 miles. They weren't easy to "break" apart from the head at that point, so I can imagine what it would be like at 100k.



I'm glad I had a torque wrench, and this is really something to consider getting for just changing your plugs in general. Most plugs only have to be torqued to 15 ft-lbs. They really don't have to be that tight in there, and it's hard to tell where to quit.

I honestly don't know how an automaker in general expects their own mechanics to easily extract plugs at 100k without a higher probability of head damage....

 

does anyone have those plugs in a max