And by the way...I rechecked the owners manual and it says the gap should be .043. My bad.

 

I gapped them at 0.044 " with a wire type gauge plus feeler gauges. Be very careful and do not put any pressure on the tip when adjusting the gap. In other words bend the negative electrode without using the tip as a pressure point.

 

Big Al - Thanks for the suggestion on checking the spark plugs! Three of them were properly seated, but I found #2 to be quite loose, nearly finger tight. All of the gaps were spot-on.

I wonder - does the improvement in idle smoothness that some have reported come from the new plug design or simply from having them properly seated?

 

When installing the plugs how do you torque them down? Do you use a torque wrench and if so how many ft lbs? Thanks.

John

 

The manual calls for 13 ft-lb.

Denso says 1/2 turn after the washers touch. The half-turn method worked fine in my opinion. This crushes the washer and seats the plug. BTW, you should also use a little anti-seize compound on the threads.

 

Now we're talking ... Some people on the board still think iridium plugs are useless and have no performance value.

 

although I had purchased the denso iridium plugs, I hadn't put them in yet. Reading this thread made me itchy to put them in, so I did it today.

At first, I thought "what a pain in the a** to change plugs" because of taking the cover off, then pulling the "connector towers" (I don't know what they are called). Then I started thinking about all the other cars I have owned, where you go to change the plugs and you have to blow the dead bugs and dust from around the spark plugs so this stuff doesn't fall into the head when you take the plug out. Then I realized, "hey, this is pretty classy".

Anyway, as mentioned by others, the car does seem to idle better. I just took a short drive around the block, so hard to tell performance under driving. If I notice anything a lot better than the stock plugs, I will post.