This is spark plug 4

thats an awesome pic. nice job man!

a lil extra carbon on the tip?

i see a little detonation there (small white speckles) and overall it looks like its running on the hot side (how far the line is down the ground strap)

I swear that "reading the spark plug" is akin to reading tea leaves....

....i know that isnt sitting ON your CAR right???

thanks jeff!

congrads, you have sings of detonation !


mine looked just like that, when my tvsv's were showing knock. what heat range are those?

This post has been edited by lagos: Oct 8, 2006 - 7:51 PM

This pic was taken after I started the car and let if idle for a very long time. I'm having a major vac leak issue right now. Its so bad that the car can't idle on its own for that long. I think its coming from the fuel rail.

Those are stock Denso's for the 185. Next year I'm going a step colder. They may look hot because of the fact I have been using only race gas. I've had two tanks of 100 octane, half a tank of 110. Now I'm on a mix of 110 and 93.

And yes, thats on my car.

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hope u find your leak

the main problem with the plugs, other then heat (white on ground strap), is the little white specs you see all over the center of the plug. if u look at them in the light, youll notice they shine. thats tiny pieces of your pistons, believe it or not. put those brk7e's in and make that tvsv led's. then youll know for sure when its happening.

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ahh,..for some reason, i thought you were using the 7's...i would defiently switch to the bkr7's (ngk copper) jeff, with the higher than stock boost level and what not.

I'm going to give them a shot over the winter. Tomorrow I'm working on the car again. I'll pull this plug out clean off the top there and see if thats metal or carbon. The plugs were gapped at .028

did you reset your ecu after filling back up with the 93, jeff?
if not, i would prolly get into the habit of doing so..

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I reset everytime I down grade octanes

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haha, why is that? once you know what conditions look like on the plugs its pretty easy. reading the fuel ring is whats difficult to learn.

also, you should only read a new plug after you've let the engine run to temp then done a WOT run and shut the car off at high engine rpm and not let the plug idle. that can throw the plug reading off, but not many street engines get that treatment when it comes to plug reading.

btw, when i said hot, what i mean is that it looks lean. you need a little more fuel in there bud.

This post has been edited by Bitter: Oct 8, 2006 - 8:30 PM

I highly doubt that I'm running lean. On my dyno run file the A/F does not show any indication of being lean.

i stand by what i say, that plug says hot which usually means lean.

This post has been edited by Bitter: Oct 8, 2006 - 9:00 PM

jeff, when u take them all out. can you take a pic of all 4 of them together? id like to see if your ats fuel rail helps the plugs look more even then mine do. thanks!

jeff plugs dont lie thats not the best plug ive seen. little to much on the white powdery side.

im gunna pull my plugs tommorow now lol just to check.


also your dyno slip. if your A/f goes in incriments of 2 then your hair above 12:1 untill like 4.7krpm. that seems fine but where was the prob the tailpipe or the dowpipe you can get different readings. who knows.

This post has been edited by x_itchy_b_x: Oct 8, 2006 - 10:18 PM

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Will do. Should be in a few months before I can do it. Art can you posy the pic of your plugs ?

I hear ya John, this pic was taken after the car had been idling for a while. I have my relay working so at Idle my pump isnt working to full capacity. So the car could be lean at idle. We'll see next year I'll try a real test. As bitter noted above. WOT and shutting the car off. If its white after that, I'll get myself an adjustable fuel pressure regulator.

ive been dealing with some odd lean issues on my car the past few weeks. having a wideband in the car, really opens up your eyes. so far, i found 2 things that were affecting my a/f ratio. 1st one was that i had a fuse tap running from the ignition fuse to power my gauges and other car electronics. i added the wide band to that, and out of nowhere i started getting detonation at almost any boost level above 10psi. turns out, that your ignition fuse is what powers your injectors, fuel pump, etc.. and this was causing some type of current draw, and not giving the power the injectors needed. moved the fuse tap over to the cig lighter fuse, and that problem went away.

the other thing i found, is that i had a TINY air leak in my intake piping. i didn't even know it untill i noticed it while boost leak testing through the intake. after fixing it my a/f ratio got more rich. so you might want to look into those 2 things.

here is a pic of my plugs. its kind of old. from 5.26.06. you can see too much heat on them. this is mostly from the advanced timing in the jdm ecu's. you can also see cylinder 3 looking a lot leaner then the rest of them .




now these next ones are from a few weeks ago, after fixing some things. you can tell they look a lot better then the 1st set. you can clearly see how plug 1 and 4 are more rich then 2 and 3. this is what im hoping to find out if the ats rail fixes. if it does, i would buy one.



This post has been edited by lagos: Oct 8, 2006 - 11:48 PM

lagos, other than being lean and doing a bit of cold driving, your plugs look better than mine and i'm not boosted at all! i see a little detonation on mine, but theyre the same plugs i had at 20degrees.

there should be a thread all about plug reading with examples of each condition it really is a useful thing to know and can tell you soooo much about whats going on.

just pulled them when i got out of work. i also have a JDM ecu but i dont seem to have that problem.
the outer threaded ring shows its ruch at idle and the porcelain shows it fine under WOT, look good to me.
but I should really being running a colder plug for the higher boost, ill be going with NGK bkre7's or w/e... somthing like that. those are stock Denso plugs i picked up from the dealer.

This post has been edited by x_itchy_b_x: Oct 9, 2006 - 5:17 PM

those look really good.

Nice pink blanket you got there Art

Those plugs do look very good, John.

I remember a magazine I read a while back had a great article on reading plugs, setting gap, and what temp plugs to use for what sort of applications. Pretty good article.


I know its not a FI motor, but after changing spark plugs on my 5SFE you could see the white on the old ones indicating either a hot/lean motor condition. I put fresh new plugs in, and the condition looks identical.
I'm quite confident that this is due to me driving 60+ miles on the highway every day last year at about 80 MPH....at those engine speeds (~4,000 RPMS) and not delivering much fuel due to a low throttle position, my best instincts told me that this causes a plug to appear relatively lean even though I'm sure the factory tune is A-OK on the motor.

Unless the injectors or fuel filter are pretty clogged or theres a vacuum leak that causes a lean off-throttle condition to the fuel system, I would think that my plugs aren't a great indicator of my engine condition, no?

Jeff, maybe your vacuum leak could be causing the "lean plug" appearance both at idle and at while cruising on the highway at high RPMS where fuel consumption depends more on the vacuum present at the fuel rail??

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its a red shop rag

it turns blue if it gets acid on it

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reading plugs IS very tricky because certain parts of the plug tell you different things. so maybe the white you saw, was just fine. it could also just be a problem with the brand of plug or heat range that you used.

when you are cruising on the highway, you are at 14.7 afr (aka stoich). when u lift off the throttle, the car goes VERY lean. this is totally normal, and shouldn't show up on the plugs.

here are some good sites for plug reading

http://www.dragstuff.com/techarticles/how-to-read-plugs.html

http://www.maxracesoftware.com/spark_plugs.htm

This post has been edited by lagos: Oct 9, 2006 - 10:29 PM

i guess "reading" plugs is just old technology, i think ill trust a wideband
also those plugs i showed have seen 20+ psi... so im not sure what that might do to them lol.

This post has been edited by x_itchy_b_x: Oct 9, 2006 - 10:37 PM