Changing spark plugs

[Akari]

Originally Posted by Mr.ac

that sucks. Happened to me a few time. That dam springy ball on the extension got engaged on the socket.

What I did was I got two long needle nose pliers. With one I held the extension and with the other I use it as a leverage point to push the socket out of the extension.

I ended up cutting strips of duck tape to place over the springy ball on the extension. It's not 100% fool proof but it can serve as a guide.

I ran into similar problems and found that shoving a crescent wrench opened the right amount between the two would pop them apart. After figuring that out I'd just let them get stuck and keep using that trick.

[Bonburner]

Originally Posted by Mr.ac

that sucks. Happened to me a few time. That dam springy ball on the extension got engaged on the socket.

What I did was I got two long needle nose pliers. With one I held the extension and with the other I use it as a leverage point to push the socket out of the extension.

I ended up cutting strips of duck tape to place over the springy ball on the extension. It's not 100% fool proof but it can serve as a guide.

Yeah I tried jacking up the engine by oil pan (made a sizable dent, oh well) and that didn't work. I ended up using a wrench to hold in the 14 mm socket and yanked out the extension, I did Not make that mistake again.

Good thing I started on the easiest one (passenger front).

[floydthebarberbeefcake]

Awesome. Will try this whenever the time comes. I'm at 24k and I had the car almost 7 months.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Teseo]

Originally Posted by Bonburner

I got my 12 mm socket (I think it was 12 .. might have been 10) with my extension stuck in the ignition coil tunnel.

Walking over to AutoZone to buy a low profile jack now :/

Edit - Jack didn't help .. wondering I need to remove more things like the intake to raise the engine a bit more ..

You will need to de-mount the outside ecu and move aside too, intake as well

[Bonburner]

Originally Posted by Teseo

You will need to de-mount the outside ecu and move aside too, intake as well

I moved the ECU but not the intake.

[scion fr-s]

Just picked up a set of HKS sparkplugs. Not looking forward to changing them!

[Hades]

Spark plugs are a PITA. I'd recommend just doing it right and jacking up the engine a bit, unless you have *really* small hands. I did the over the top method and seemed to take forever.

[Hungry]

Is this any worse than changing plugs in an Outback?

[schmearcampain]

Could changing the plugs be easier from underneath? I’m going in to a DIY shop with a car lift to change my transmission and differential oil and thinking that while it’s up there, maybe I could change the plugs too.

[aemravan]

So having fought my (now solved) misfire issue, the first thing I did was change out the plugs. After reading all the horror stories I was definitely not looking forward to it.. However, before jacking the motor and going the long route I decided to test the "leave the engine in place " sparkplug replacement method.



I have now done it twice (due to later doing a compression test I didnt do the first go around).



All in all, I am pretty confident that I can change all 4 plugs inside of a 2 hours window (maybe less with 1 or 2 more tries..)


Here is my modified method (I am in no way taking credit as its just a combination from what I've read and seen on youtube)


1.remove sound pipe (or whatever the heck its called)

2.remove the injector covers on both sides. The drivers side one takes a bit of brain teasing to get out of the way.

3. undo the bracket holding the 3 hoses (this will tear up your forearms)
4. unplug and remove fuel. inj. ecu
5. using a small 10mm socket and ratchet blindly undo the coils

6. pull coils off to the the side and unplug the connectors
7. take a 3" extension and grind off the latching ball, (i dont mess with tape to keep it from latching, made the mistake once)
8. using a 14mm deep socket, the modified extension, and a ratchet, one by one slide everything blindly into the spark plug hole.

9. break the spark plug free using the ratchet and give it a couple of turns, can't go too far because it will hit the frame and you wont take it off.

10. remove the ratchet and using 2 index fingers rotate the extension a little more ( also can't go too far b/c it will bottom out coming off)

11. take out the extension and using a magnet pull out the socket.
12. push in a vacuum hose into the socket and stick it back into the hole. Applying pressure with 1 finger on the tip of the socket rotate the hose (like a flexible extnsion) until the spark plug is fully free. If you pushed hard enough it will actually push the vacuum line over the plug end and pull it out.

13. do this for all 4 plugs and reassemble in reverse.





my first time took maybe 3-4 hours (spent a lot of time trying to detach the extension I didn't think about latching to the socket with the ball...) Second go-around was I was much, much quicker.



I have a buddy who has friend with an FRS needing plugs done, I told him if he'll bring the car and supply the 4 plugs i'll change them out for him for $175. I feel like that is reasonable for him and decent money for me


hey...maybe i'll make a video and actually time the change if I get around to doing it..

[tobin]

Originally Posted by Hungry

Is this any worse than changing plugs in an Outback?

Yes. Exponentially worse. Outback plugs are a walk in the park.

[AD55]

I've been trying to figure this one out. The plug replace interval is listed as 5 years or 60K miles, whichever comes first.

Lets say you are the proverbial "little old lady" that only drives her BRZ/86 back and forth to church on Sunday and put's maybe 5K a year on her car. That comes to 25K miles in 5 years or about 100 miles a week. Well within the realm of possibility so long as she doesn't live too far from church. Applying those numbers to the maintenance schedule tells me that even when driving half the distance, she would still need to replace the plugs in five years?

This got me to thinking. The miles or months, which ever comes first, rule might make sense when it comes to something like fluids, but not so much for spark plugs.

My first thought was maybe the plugs in a boxer engine wear out at the same rate whether the engine is running or not. Since that didn't make much sense, I came to a second conclusion.

Maybe the manufacturer assumed that if you only drove a few thousand miles a year, most of that driving was probably in the city under stop and go conditions, and that type of driving wears a plug out faster. Since I'm not a mechanic or an expert on spark plugs I was not sure about this theory either.

My last theory was that just maybe the maintenance schedule was designed to help Toyota/Subaru stealership's take your hard earned money every five years replacing something that didn't really need replacing.

Someone please enlighten me, I would shudder to think my last theory was the correct one.

[Mr.ac]

Originally Posted by AD55

I've been trying to figure this one out. The plug replace interval is listed as 5 years or 60K miles, whichever comes first.

Lets say you are the proverbial "little old lady" that only drives her BRZ/86 back and forth to church on Sunday and put's maybe 5K a year on her car. That comes to 25K miles in 5 years or about 100 miles a week. Well within the realm of possibility so long as she doesn't live too far from church. Applying those numbers to the maintenance schedule tells me that even when driving half the distance, she would still need to replace the plugs in five years?

This got me to thinking. The miles or months, which ever comes first, rule might make sense when it comes to something like fluids, but not so much for spark plugs.

My first thought was maybe the plugs in a boxer engine wear out at the same rate whether the engine is running or not. Since that didn't make much sense, I came to a second conclusion.

Maybe the manufacturer assumed that if you only drove a few thousand miles a year, most of that driving was probably in the city under stop and go conditions, and that type of driving wears a plug out faster. Since I'm not a mechanic or an expert on spark plugs I was not sure about this theory either.

My last theory was that just maybe the maintenance schedule was designed to help Toyota/Subaru stealership's take your hard earned money every five years replacing something that didn't really need replacing.

Someone please enlighten me, I would shudder to think my last theory was the correct one.

That's a long post.
Service schedules are like wiping your ass.
You can use very little or not at all. You'll feel dirty and everyone around will smell your shity ass.

Or you can wipe till there is no more shit. You'll feel fresh and clean and won't smell like shit.

Or you can wipe it clean, shower and bleach your asshole if you want to be super anal (yes that's a pun)

Long story short, you can do all the scheduled services yourself for just the cost of the parts. Man up, learn what a wrench is, fix your shit and please for the love of god wipe your shitty ass.


Oh and sell/burn your car and buy a Honda Cvic SI.

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by AD55

Someone please enlighten me, I would shudder to think my last theory was the correct one.

I believe the manufacturer recommendations are an attempt to balance the average wear in parts with a margin of safety that prevents blowback on them in terms of reliability.

For example, it's very likely that the replacement recommendation timing is somewhere between 60% and 90% of the end of life of the part. The manufacturer isn't going to figure out the max life of a critical part, say like a timing belt on an interference engine, is 60,000 miles, and then set the recommended maintenance at 60,000 miles. More than likely they will figure out the minimum point of failure from wear and set the maintenance level below that by some margin of safety.


I can tell you that on the FRS I did not change my plugs until slightly over 120,000 miles. The performance of the car did not significantly improve after the replacement, or decline before. Then again, I'm not racing my car and nearly all the miles on mine are "country miles", not city, and not exactly highway.