Steve, here is how I figure it. I'm old school. We used to change plugs once a year (freaks me out that one of my other cars recommends not changing the spark plugs til after 100,000 miles) and I used to do routine maintenance, rebuild carburetors, and when your car threw a rod, you just opened up the engine and took care of things. It was absolutely amazing how much crud you would pull out of an engine and you could see how this sludge could slow down or grind an engine to a halt. So changing plugs isn't a big deal and the one's on this truck look fairly easy to get to as compared to my other cars. I knew that either mentioning platinum plugs or Autolite would cause an issue but heck, my buddy uses them on his '93 F150 (mine is a '94) and he has not had any issues.

Just haven't run into an OBD1 out here so I may end up having to hook up some wire to do the self test and then I'll just digitally record the results to figure them out.