Platinum Spark Plugs on 95 Safari?

1182 Views 7 Replies 4 Participants Last post by Bikley, 4 mo ago

1dumbSAFARI

Discussion Starter · Feb 14, 2020

Am I a total retard for doing that before I started learning how to work on this lovely hunk of continual work I purchased a year and a half ago?

I'm enjoying the process of slowly learning a thing or two and doing work on the thing. It makes me more confident in working on the cars we actually use on a day to day for minor repairs and maintenance.

My main imaginary ideas about what's actually wrong with the "truck" as it does say truck on the back. Are the spider, a possible vacuum leak, distributor timing, o2 sensors & egr. And also possibly the plugs that I put in last year when I did my own version of a tune up and decided on getting platinum plugs vs. copper. I'm not sure if there is an issue there as well. I don't know what sort of voltage we're dealing with since I just watched a video on the history of the spark plug.

Anyway, any comments are welcome. I'll probably keep holding on to this truck until I break it completely. It's a fun experience.

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AstroWill

· #3 · Feb 14, 2020

That is perfectly fine as long as they are the proper plug/heat range.
The practical difference for us is longer maintenance intervals as the plugs got modernized. Of course that is based on a properly/well running engine.

Copper gets changed most often, then platinum came out and extended that, double platinum after that extended it more, and then iridium with the longest maintenance interval of them all and what I currently install.

Sure there are differences in how clean they stay, conductivity, energy requirements, but that stuff is kinda minor to compare to the maintenance issue.

Our vans went to platinum in 96, AC Delco replaced the platinum 41-932 with the iridium 41-993.

I prefer iridium plugs on sale

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AstroWill

· #5 · Feb 14, 2020

1dumbSAFARI said:
I still have a 16mm socket stuck to a nut for one of the tank straps that I haven't managed to shake loose over a year later.

LOL, interesting storage location

1dumbSAFARI said:
It's been a few months since then and I'm kicking myself for not just going ahead and doing the fuel lines and whole spider while I was in there as I'm starting to suspect the spider might be having issues. It was pretty brittle, but I didn't notice any apparent leaks. I just have a feeling I've got issues with the injectors.

Yea, probably better to replace them while you were in there, but now you have experience! Poppet valves suck, a lot.

1dumbSAFARI said:
Oh, I also dropped the tranny pan and replaced filter and trans fluid, but did not flush it. There was quite a bit of sludge at the bottom of the pan and she's not exactly shifting smooth, so I'm sure that tranny is on a slow death march.

That is the best procedure, but yea, that isn't the best sign, a little is expected but a lot is not good.

1dumbSAFARI said:
Anyway, that's her and my back story. I'm going to check for vacuum leaks one of these weekends and after that will proceed further.

It's all a process of elimination, and any progress is good!

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