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Old 04-20-2024, 11:08 PM
froze froze is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Fort Wayne, Indiana
Posts: 1,269
Buy a vintage a vintage car and then you only have to buy copper plugs, which still cost less than $4 each. Some will argue that a copper plug won't last more than 12,000 miles, that was true when lead was used in the fuel, when they removed lead those plugs could see north of 25,000 miles easily. Then if you replaced the mechanical points with Pertronix electronic points, and replaced the stock coil with Pertronix Flamethrower coil those copper plugs could last 50,000 miles and probably longer. And you can change the plugs yourself very easily in older cars saving the cost of labor.

Thankfully you bought the plugs at a car parts store, had you gone to the dealer those exact same plugs would have cost you around $65 EACH! That's not including installation either.

One important note, it is wise to use the same brand, type, and temp rating plug that was put in new from the factory. Today engines are more exacting than they used to be, so engineers design the engines and then find out which plug will give it the best MPG. Yes, I know you could switch to a different brand of plug and probably won't notice any loss of MPG, but when the manufacturers use exact measuring guidelines, they do so for CAFE standards, so even if a certain plug saves only a 1/2 mpg, they're going to go with the plug that had better results. So if you want your engine to perform the way the factory designated it then use the exact plug, no matter what anyone will tell you, you won't find a plug that will perform better, the factory has already figured that out, any other plug will perform less, how much less is the question.

Even back in the vintage days of copper plug engines, certain brands of plugs worked better in certain engines, but they weren't quite as picky as they are today. But most people would use AC Delco plugs in high-performance GM engines because they worked better than other brands of plugs in a GM; a lot of people liked Autolite in regular performance engines because of all the plugs on the market at the time they lasted the longest, about double the life of any other plug back then. But like GM, Chrysler engines liked Champion plugs the best for their high-performance engines. So even back then some picky engines ran the best with certain brands of plugs, so it was wise to check the owner's manual.
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