Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Plugs

So i finally got around to changing the plugs yesterday, the old guy who had the car before me had a habit of not maintaining it, also a habit of running into things, when i got the car it had 62222 miles on it and the oil hadent been changed since 48000 for an example, so i figured it had some pretty old plugs, i went out and bought wires and autolite double platinums, took the wires off and went to take spark plug one out, wouldnt move, none of them would, it took me ten minutes of carefully beating the crap out of it to get the first one out, it was totally covered in rust and the ceramic piece was dark brown, at first i thought they work stock, but now im not sure, what do you think?

Try to get as much of the crud out from around the plugs as possible with copmpressed air or maybe a shop vac. Then soak them with some PB Blaster or somethign to try to free up the rust. You REALLY don't want to break one off in the head. Especially those back ones on a V6.

Some people amaze me with how totally ignorant of routine maintenance they are.

When I bought my truck for example. It was 10 years old and had every original piece of the ignition system on it. Luckily the oil and filters were changed somewhat routinely. The ink was so faded on the plugs you almost couldn't read them to see what they were.

Yeah: but blame Ford for the marketing crap about not needing any tuneups for 160K or whatever it was. Most people buy into that nonsense.