Ok, first of all, read my plugs and tell me what you see. I don't think they look bad, but they arn't good either. The firing tip is a little darker than I think it shold be, as well as some good carbon buildup on the outside "ring" of the plug. Here is a picture.

Also, last night (in the dark) while tracking down a wierd engine sound, I found some wierd stuff. 1) an exhaust bolt was snaped off again, I had just gotten them fixed, time to go back. and 2) there were blue sparks emenating from my NEW Blaster coil when it was put under load. Now I've been having problems with very little power in high-load siuations, and I think my failing coil might be doing it... At first I thought it was weak injector fire, and that I'm sure is still a cause, but this also might be it. Comments?

P.S. the plugs have a reddish tint to them, I assume this is from the gas I use considering I -have not- used injector cleaner on this set of plugs? BTW, the plugs are probably 6000-8000 miles old.

Any questions/comments or ideas are very welcome. I want to be happy with this motor before I part with it but its time is approaching. The plan for the summer is to swap in a carbed V8 drivetrain.

 

BTW, they are Delco's, R42TS's...

And yes, that is actually a picture of my sparkplugs. My father is a graphic artist, media specialist, and photographer for the government and it's contractors here at Fort Monmouth. He knows his shiznit. I enlisted his help for the photo's.

 

It looks like normal wear to me , nothing to be concerned about .Do the threads look black like that because of gas , oil ? or is that just the tint in the pic ?

I went back and read your post again , and saw about the carbon build-up , I took one of my plugs out yesterday , and took some others out recently and didnt notice any build-up . O-well , not sure on the carbon build-up , Well my responce does not help much , but it bumps ya to the top

I do know the brownish tint is normal

 

As long as they aren't extremely white or black, your engine is probably in tune. I can't tell from your pic, but a good way to tell if plugs are worn, is to look at the center electrode and see if the edges are rounding off.

Also, i've seen the reddish tint before and nobody seems to know what it is but it doesn't seem like a problem indicator.

 

Any comments on what I said about the blue glow eminating from the front of my coil when it's put under load? I'm going to get a new Accel cap and rotor and probably new wires and O2, but should I wait and get a new coil and see if it's caused by worn ignition components (they don't look bad and they shouldn't be bad after this amount of time) or has it already bit the big one?

 

Sorry , I forgot about that , heh . Get a new one , thats a bad coil . How old is that coil ? If not old , Id try to get my money back or a free replacement . Coils are suppose to last for awhile .

 

If the coil's new, send MSD an e-mail. You can find that on their website http://www.msdignition.com . Maybe it's a bad coil wire?

Can't really tell much from the plug, the pic's a bit dark, but looks normal. If there was excessive buildup of deposits on the center, you might want to move to a hotter plug, but I think the ring of carbon around the outside is alright.

 

The tint is from hard and fast accelerations. You neeed to do one of two things to make it stop happening. 1.) be a little more genttle on the pedal. (Not my favorite thing to do!!) 2.) step up to a slightly hotter plug.

All though it has been my experience that the tint has nothing to do with the proper function of the plug other then the plug being out of it's heat range. This only means that the plug is to hot to "self clean", but as long as you don't do it all of the time the plug will have a chance to blow off any deposits.

Other then that it looks like a perfectly fine plug.

 

The plug looks fine to me too.. wish mine came out that clean all the time.. HE HE

The "glow" is electrons escaping the wire. loose/bad connection faulty part.

The glow is remenisant of seeing the "halo" on the high volt power lines at night.