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I have a 2004 Chevy 2500 express van with 132,000 miles. Still runs fine with original plugs, gas milage is OK, but book says replace at 100,000. So I get an estimate and my mechanic wants $450.00. Parts and labor. Labor alone is 250.00.
How I miss the good old days.
By the way, other quotes were higher. Do modern plugs outright fail nowadays and not decline in performance like they used to?
Do modern plugs outright fail nowadays and not decline in performance like they used to?
Thanks
No different than plugs of old. They are just made of platinum or iridium these days and typically last about 100-125K before service interval states to change them out.
The plug tip and ground strap just erode like the plugs of old, and your fuel economy will suffer and your engine will start to misfire.
If you don't have any misfiring now, you can prob squeak by a bit longer. I had a coworker go 250K miles!! on a set of original plugs. By the time he replaced them though, the car was misfiring badly on all cylinders.
Plug change not that huge of a deal. It can still be DIY if you aren't intimidated by locating, unbolting and removing the coil packs.
My 1992 Mercury Grand Marquis had original plugs and wires for over 15 years.
Then one day it ran really rough. Wires and plugs replaced and ran great since.
Since then I have this done ahead of time and use factory wires and plugs. Same as came with vehicle. I am fortunate that I have a local retired mechanic that charges $25.00 per hour. So it is not worth it for me to do anymore. I buy the plugs and wires.
Not sure if this link will work.
You probably don't have wires anymore. Modern ignition systems use coil-on-plug technologu these days.
Instead of one coil and a distributor with 8 wires...they just put a coil pack on top of each spark plug. No wires anymore.
That's what makes modern spark plug changes so intimidating. Manufacturers usually dress up the top end with plastic covers and the coil packs need to be removed to access the plugs. Not a big deal really, but if you have no idea what you are looking at it can be daunting.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Those plugs retail for about $5 each, if you have a V8, that's $40. Labor for changing them is not too bad on a normal vehicle, but sometimes vans require taking off front wheels, removing the inner fender, or even unbolting the motor mounts and raising it up. I recently changed my plugs (original) on a 1997 4 cylinder with 155,000 miles and they actually still looked good and the gap was not much over spec.
8 platinum plugs at $25 each.
2 hours of labor at $125 each.
Those are shop rates.
Replacing the plugs involves removing two dash panels and the engine cover as well as removing the cup holder assembly or one seat to get the engine cover out of the way. That gets you to 6 of the plugs. The last two require removal of the fender liner to change them out.
In the good old days you'd have to replace them every year.....
It's easy to replace them on your own depending on what sort of engine you have and can be done cheaply.
Inline 4 cyl engines are by far the easiest & cheapest. Inline 6 cyls and some longitudinal V-8's aren't too bad in most cases.
Transverse mounted anything that's not a 4 cyl is generally going to be hell. It's easy to get to the plugs up front, the rear in most cases is awful. I've heard of a few vehicles where you have a disassemble & remove A LOT of things in the engine compartment just to get to the rear plugs.
As long as they aren't frozen inside the cylinder heads by now. That happened to a friend once, and what a nightmare that turned into. After seeing all of that, I'd never leave plugs in that long.
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