auto tune up

Just for grins, I checked Autozone from plugs for this application.. Iridium plugs were $12.99 each. All the platinum plugs listed for this application were much cheaper.

But, I didnt mean to make price and supplier an issue. My question is, what is the advantage of an iridium tipped plug?

Longer life -- approx. 120k miles between replacement. I think the two main Jap manufacturers claim 200k miles, but the tendency for plugs to freeze solid in aluminum heads has a bearing on real world replacement schedules.

Toyota MDT in MO

You dont have to pull the threads out of the heads too many times to take this part of the equation seriously.

Well, 4 or 5 times tops...

Toyota MDT in MO

Salt must make a huge difference. I don't think I've ever "lubricated" a brake caliper in my life, and my 400,000+ mile 73 Satellite still has its original calipers. IIRC our annual rainfall is about 30", so it isn't exactly desert here. Of course I've only owned 1 car that didn't have the "pin" type Kelsey-Hayes calipers where the caliper pins pass through rubber bushings in the caliper anyway. The "slider" kind do look a lot more prone to binding up, which is one reason I don't like them. And multi-piston calipers don't really HAVE anything to lubricate...

Bigger than huge.

In 1979 I rebuilt the front calipers on my 78 Aspen Super Coupe _under warranty_, car had like 9000 miles on it at the time. The standard tool that everyone in the dealership service department had was an adaptor with a grease zerk attached that screwed into the caliper fluid port, you then used a grease gun to force chassis grease into the caliper to free the stuck piston(s). THAT is how bad it can get.

Last week, front brakes on a 99 Tahoe, I needed a pry bar just to budge the calipers loose off the knuckle, totally bound up with rust.

Back in my Chevy dealership days when replacing a steering rack on a X or A body, it wasn't unusual to find sub-frame attaching bolts rotted down to the diameter of a pencil lead. Took some careful and calculated torch work to get them loose without leaving yourself with a drill and tap job that could last for hours...

Amen to that!

Thing is... it's the yuppies in their SUVs that demand -that- level of snow clearing on the roads in the winter.

You got ripped off big time.

Old Geezer

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Almost 20 bucks *PER SPARK PLUG*?!?!?!? What the hell were they made out of??? Solid gold shell and connector, and fossilized ivory insulator, with a .30 calibre chunk of platinum down the middle????? Saying you got robbed is such a gross understatement it's ridiculous. The least they could have done was offer you a reacharound while they were screwing you, if only to preserve at least an illlusion of decency.

Cheap but perfectly functional plug wires for a six: $14. Fancy ones that work just the same as the cheap ones: $50 or higher, depending on how fancy. I strongly suspect you got $14 wires. Even if you got fancier ones, you got robbed.

• labor (9).

To swap 6 plugs and 6 wires?!?!? Unless it's an oddball where you've got to physically roll the engine over under the hood so you can get to the back bank, lets be generous and call it half an hour of labor. For the ones that I've dealt with where the engine needs to be rolled to get to the back bank, it turns into about an hour job. More than ample for any non-problematic plug-n-wire swap by any mechanic that's even minimally competent. At local rates, that'd total out to about $40-80 worth of billable labor. (and still too damn high, in my opinion) This outfit hit you for roughly 4 hours worth of labor for a half hour to an hour job. You got robbed. Again.

No clue to market price on that item for YOUR ride, but mine costs $4.39 & Tax (Just needed a fresh one last week to pass smog). If that price can be considered at all typical, you got robbed.

I don't think I've ever paid more than $3.00 for a fuel filter. My last one ran me less than that - 2 bucks and change. For that matter, I can't recall even SEEING, let alone paying for, a fuel filter priced more than a buck or two higher than that for any vehicle I've ever owned. I'd have to go with "you got robbed" again.

• labor ()

An hour and a half of labor to swap a PCV valve (For mine, pop the hood, reach in and pull the old one out of the grommet in the valve cover, pull the hose attached to the other end of it off, pitch the old one acoss the shop into the trash can, connect the new one to the hose, plug the other end of it back into its grommet, and drop the hood shut. Game over in five minutes or less) And a fuel filter? (For mine, jack/hoist and get underneath, pull back two spring clamps", swap hoses from old filter to new, replace spring clamps, drop the car - once the car is in the air, unless some kind of screwup happens, we're talking 5 minutes, tops, and it's back on the ground ready to drive) Man, they saw you coming from *MILES* away, didn't they???

You should be. You were robbed, plain and simple.

INCREDIBLY poorly, that's how.

You got robbed, just as sure as somebody walking up behind you in a dark alley, sticking a gun in your back, and saying "Gimme your wallet".

Have you inventoried your fingers and checked to see that any fillings you had in your teeth when you walked in the door are still there? You got took to the cleaners, Al... There's no nicer way to put it.

That -is- the going rate for the OEM spec NGK spark plug. Of course, he could have requested some cheap assed Autolite's and wiped out a $1500.00 catalytic convertor assembly due to the miss fires.

No way the wires are going to cost $14. This isn't an 83 Mazda.

What if it involved removal of the intake manifold?

Odds are that he has the PCV and the fuel filter prices switched.

But your car is carbureted, right? Fuel filters for fuel injected vehicles tend to run a bit higher than those for carbureted vehicles.

Spring clamps, definitely carbureted. You haven't changed many fuel filters on Toyotas have you Don? (they can and do put them in some totally asinine places)

No, he made a bad choice when he chose the 98 Toyota Sienna. Not that it's a bad vehicle, but not doing the proper research WRT maintenance costs and then claiming flabbergasted after the fact, well, who's -really- to blame? Then again, this is a once every 100K miles tune up which doesn't differ a whole lot from what a once every 20K miles tune up would cost over the same mileage.

Actually, no.

Pretty easy to second guess on something that you've never done. Go open some hoods, it's not 1983 anymore.

But wait, things are bound to get much more interesting... All those Ford trucks out there with OHC V-8 engines, looks like many of them will have to have the cylinder heads removed to change spark plugs based upon early reports of Ford's latest "better idea."

You can't possibly be serious, can you? Whaddaya do, just rebuild the engine at every tuneup interval? Sounds like a load of crap to me, but then again I've been disappointed quite a bit by Ford's near-misses of decent vehicles lately...

-no stick/V-8 combo on the LS, which as I understand is dying as I type this

-no stick/V-8 in the Thunderbird

-no high performance version of the T-bird, even though Ford has supercharged V-8s right in their parts bin. Wouldn't a blown bird be a great retrospective to 1957? Maybe throw in some retro touches like a Hurst style shifter with a big ivory ball and some engine turned dash accents... that would be tres cool. (yeah, I like Studebaker Hawks as well. Apparently I was born too late.)

-The Taurus has been one big bowl of suck since time immemorial, and the replacement (the 500) hasn't been selling well, apparently, because it's just as painfully bland even though it apparently doesn't suck nearly as badly

about the only thing they've gotten right is the Mustang, which is a niche vehicle that isn't going to save them, although it is a nice halo car.

nate

Whose "reports" are these. Do you have a source for what sounds like an urban legend in the making?

The topic came up on i-ATN in the "technical tips" forum on

12-5-05, including pictures from a Ford dealership tech from South Carolina. Subsequent comments offered by fleet mechanics who have had to remove the cylinder heads and "beat" the spark plugs out with a punch and hammer. Not very high mileage either... If you're familiar with the plug design in question, it becomes perfectly clear how badly Ford screwed the pooch.

The plug design uses an extreme extended nose below the tapered seat (into the combustion chamber) with zero or near zero clearance between the plug nose and cylinder head.

Similar crap dates back to the mid 80s on certain diesel engines WRT glow plug removal.

I'll just sit back and wait for the OB 'we all must be idiots if we can't remove a spark plug' comments.

I'm not entirely clear on what you mean by extended nose - you mean that there are several threads protruding into the combustion chamber? (hard to believe) or that simply there is a real long distance between the seat and the end of the threads? If the latter, this shouldn't be a problem - 3/4" reach spark plugs have been in use for literally more than half a century; I know that the Packard V-8 used them. Sounds like Ford needs to either start using anti-seize paste on the threads like you or I would or else they need to start smacking their spark plug supplier about the head and tell them to stop building spark plugs that fall apart when you try to remove them. If the former, then Ford needs to start making their heads to match their spark plug spec, or spec'ing their spark plugs to match their heads.

nate

Would it help to pull the plugs when they are new and apply liberal amounts of a good copper anti-seize compound for prevention?

--scott

Of course, but since I have to remove the intake manifold to get to the right side of my V6, I might as well put NEW plugs in there for my efforts. Since I will probably be putting in a NEW manifold gasket at the same time, it makes no sense whatsoever to mess with them until they need to be replaced, in my case.

Lg

The plug lay out is; (top to bottom

porcelain hex threads (looks to be 3/4" reach)

1/2" space taper seat extended shell (steel) looks to be about 1 inch, contains the ground electrode which bridges 180* across the shell

It's a long assed plug. Anti-seize may help, it may also make things worse.

the Motorcraft number is PZT2FF4

Worth having a look at if you're near a FLAPS this weekend.

"Liberal amounts" would probably cause a shorted plug. A light coating -may- help, it may also turn to an even bigger problem is it bakes into place. This area is below the taper seat which means for all intents and purposes, it's in the combustion chamber.

No need to wait, it's a reality!

On that topic, I wonder what the pros and cons would be in grinding down the threads that are exposed in the combustion chamber before installing the plugs...

This precaution wouldn't aid in the 4.6/5.4 penchant for pulling out threads during normal service operation, but as in the circumstance you mentioned, it would significantly reduce interference from distorted threads (a la classic exaust stud removal thread destruction).

Toyota MDT in MO