35k miles spark plugs swap

I decided to swap out the spark plugs in my '15 Tacoma, took no more than an hour to do... But definitely saved myself some money by doing it myself. And of course all of you already know this about Toyota that it has two different brand of spark plugs installed by the dealer (NGK driver side and Denso on passenger side). Weird thing I noticed after removing the old spark plugs was that the NGKs wore out to .054-.056 and Denso all wore out evenly to .049 while the maintenance manual Gap settings is to be .043. maybe installed at different gaps? Or material durability between those spark plugs.... Another thing I noticed was that passenger side cylinders (1,3,5) are running rich in fuel mixture while driver's side cylinders 2,4,6 were running a bit lean... I wonder if Toyota does that for a reason.... But now I'm definitely looking into Dyno tuning my truck

 

I save even more money by gapping them and putting them back in.

Original OEM plugs running well for 191k miles.

 

i noticed too that the DENSO plugs hold their gap better than NGKs,and are slightly less expensive

 

That's just ludacris... They're like $4.00 each at the dealer.

 

He posts the same 2 things all the time:

1) My Ford F350 this or that

2) I never changed my plugs, yada yada

 

many people go that long and more without even gapping.. it's surprising how long these plugs will last. 30K change intervals is what I would call, ambitious.

 

I swapped in NGK iridiums at 40K. I'm at 110K miles now. I'll look at a couple this summer to see if they need changed yet. I just finished a 2800 mile road trip. Truck runs great.

 

But that's how you burn up coil packs - and those cost more than spark plugs.

 

Yay. I have a fan!

 

I need to do this tonight. Any tips?

 

Even still, changing plugs every 30k... ambitious. Owners with no mechanical knowledge going 150k on stock plugs with no issues with coil packs. Anecdotal evidence, I confess. But still.

 

righty tighty, lefty loosey

 

In my own experience, I replaced the spark plugs in my 07 2nd gen 4.0 at about 60,000 mi, there was no visible amount of high ware or big drop in MPG. I just wasn't convinced they would last 100,000 mi.
with new Plugs I could feel better throttle response especially in stop and go traffic, a little quicker starts, cold, maby 1 or 2 MPG increase.
In short I was happy with the results in the investment.

 

that's how they suck you in, seem cheap now but I would have invested over 150 by now and gained what?

 

I spend more than that on beer in a month. I guess it's peace of mind, in case the plug gets so heat fatigued the electrode/ground breaks off and gets jammed in your valvetrain, or it snaps in half and jams in the head when you're removing it, or it bonds with the aluminum cylinder head and removes the threads when you're taking it out ... stuff like that ... that costs a fortune to repair.

Of course, if any of that happens to you, I doubt we will hear about it on TW ....

 

It takes you a month to spend $150 on beer? What a lightweight!!

J/K

 

$150 over a decade isn't shit That averages to $1.25 a month.

 

Yes, NKG plugs wore more then Denso. I did notice same thing when I replaced my spark plugs first time few years back. Last weekend after 35k miles i changed plugs again. These were all denso that I purchased on dealership 3 years ago. They looked just fine. Almost same as new ones I put in. anyway i dont mind doing it every 3-4 years. New plugs I purchased a months ago while I was shopping some other parts. Just waited some free time to do it.

 

Well that doesn't include my vodka and red wine budget

 

i'm at 49,911 on my 2015 and haven't swapped them yet. gone this long figured i'd wait till the 50k