Just bought this 97 tahoe vortec 350 my brother has a 98. compared to his mine seems to be lacking a little bit of power. Before i got it someone put a set of standard champions in it. it comes from the factory with ac platinums just wanting to know if anyone knows anything about this. i was going to put the factory plugs back in it but i wanted to get another opinion before i paid $6/plug
factory platinum plugs in 97 tahoe
Apr 04, 2004
6 Replies
The main idea behind the platinum plug is that they'll last a lot longer than standard plugs. I don't think that you should really feel all that much difference horse power wise. Are there other differences in the vehicles, like gearing, miles on the motor etc?
nospam
Mileage is about the same on the 2 both are at about 90k i think i have a little bit of valve noise also but not sure do you know if that was a problem with the vortec motors? i am gonna have that checked out at chevrolet my truck came with a 3yr 36k mile warranty
There are some guys on here that can answer the reliability question better than I as they work on these for a living. I have a 5.7 liter vortec with
57,000 miles and it runs great. It's quite and uses no oil. I'm surprised at the valve noise though. Chevy motors generally have very reliable valve trains. But if you have 90k on the truck how will the 3yr 36k mile warranty help? Or are you just commenting on what it had when purchased new?nospam
The warranty came with the truck when i bought it used
Brian, pull a plug and check the gap. Platinum plugs require a larger gap because they have a cooler spark (on yours I believe it's 0.060"). If the prior owner threw non-platinum plugs in her and set the gap to what the emissions label or manual said (0.060") they are gapped way to big. Non-platinum plugs in your vehicle should be running at 0.035"-0.040". So, while I would replace them all with Platinum plugs gapped to spec, you can run your non-platinum plugs so long as they have the correct gap of
0.035-0.040.Valve noise is not a known problem with the Vortec 350's.
Doc
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