Hey there my auto enthusiast friend! A common question which appears under different forms, and that bothers a lot of the car owners out there about their car maintenance, is: When do I replace my car’s spark plugs, how often should I change the spark plugs on my vehicle or why do I have to change them?
When the spark plug ages, the gap which the spark has to travel in order to provide the perfect combustion, also widens and with that you also get some problems with your car.
The thing is that this isn’t brain surgery, it’s all about simple car care and if your car has over 60.000 miles on the odometer, then here are the main reasons why you should change your car’s spark plugs:
prevent damaging the ignition coils and the car’s CPU– the bigger the gap of the spark plugs is, the more demand goes through the ignition coil and other electrical components to make the car engine run smooth, thus the risk of frying them is bigger.
rough idling engine – yup, your car will start to idle weird, changing between the smooth 1000 rpm to fluctuating jittery sounds and this isn’t a good sign for your car engine, misfiring spark plugs are bad.
car accelerating slower than before– this can also happen if you have a slipping clutch but a set of long lasting iridium spark plugs is cheaper than changing the clutch without having to.
bad gas mileage– the fuel economy will drastically decrease from the incomplete combustion which appears due to deteriorated spark plugs (up to 35% increase in fuel consumption) so a visit to the car shop for a spark plug change is needed.
the car won’t start– worn out spark plugs can drain your car battery and you can have trouble starting the car even if you have a good battery.
This simple car maintenance top tip is effective and cheap to do; Even if the auto manufacturers usually put in their brand new cars iridium spark plugs that should keep a perfect gap for about 100.000 miles, you should try changing them sooner, just as you do with the engine oil.
If you want to save yourself of costly repairs on the long run and also get a better gas mileage, then changing the spark plugs is a must and remember to check them every 30.000 miles! To take care of cars is pretty darn easy!
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I once did try iridium spark plugs and they were about 6 to 7 bucks each and then I tried copper spark plugs that were 2 bucks on an 1992 Volvo 740 . I must say that I had better gas mileage on the coppers plugs but they were OEM.