I plan on hitting the plug change tomorrow, and wonder if it's a good idea to run it hard before pulling them... basically gonna take out the truck, run some short WOT blasts, get back to the house, shut her down, cool it off, then pull 'em.

Is that the best way to get an idea of how the plugs are doing (i.e. the color on the plugs, etc)... or do you need to even bother running it before changing them? I want to see how well they were (or weren't) working out while I'm swapping them.

Will a lean condition color still show up on the plug if you didnt run it hard right before pulling them?

Gonna install the NGKs BR7EF's...Here's the mods on my '01:
6# lower
Chip
Ram air & open element
LFP VB
...and also plan on buying and installing a 160 deg thermostat. I never blast the heat, so not worried about cooler running heater.

 

BTW:

If anyone's interested, going to the Midnight Racing (Test n Tune) at Gateway Raceway near St. Louis tomorrow night (Friday).

They have the track open from 12am until 6
Should be a fun evening!!

 

wow - too cool!!
That is a six-eight? hour drive from Cincy... poo...

john

 

ya... They had something on the local St. Louis news about it... They do it to keep the street racers off the road. Good idea. It was kinda funny seeing them filming at the track on one of those Test n Tune nights, and all these ricers running everything they could find

...so nobody has any input on the original ?

 

Running it hard for a short while before you change your plugs won't tell you that much. Plugs are great indicators of how the engine has been running over a long period of time, but some short WOT runs will only be an indicator if you had new plugs to begin with. My suggestion is to change the plugs and look at how the old ones were colored. Have fun, it can be a pain.

 

To get a good reading from your plugs you would have to do a WOT run and shut it down in the middle of your WOT so not to let it idle or mid throttle or anything. The plugs would also have to be new. Not really practical.

 

whatever you do is make sure the heads are at ambient temp,
im willing to bet a few plug launches are resaulted from them being changed with a warm motor