So its come time to do the spark plugs on my 02 WRX First, get at the drivers side and replace the fuel filter that is in the pic, pretty straight foreward...if you can whipe your own butt you can replace it. To get at the drivers side plugs I had to remove the windshield washer fluid resivoir. After many swear words. I figured out I must jack up the drivers site of the engine to get a socket/extension in there. I finally got the first plug out. yay. must gap the plugs to .028-.030, I chose .028 to prevent misfire codes. Use a real feeler gauge. Not one of those cheap 99 cent keychain gapers, they leave your electrode at a slant. Moving to the passenger side, I have to remove my airbox this time to get at the spark plugs now with the airbox assembly out I can see my coilpacks! here is the new NGK vs. the old NGKs time to tighten the plugs and coil packs back down! Done after around an hour. Most time consuming part was finding the right tools/right site extensions and leaning that I must jack up the drivers site a little to fit my wrench in there. just thought Id share...
Ahhh, the drivers side. I hated that. I ended up sticking the socket and the extension into the hole then attaching the ratchet once they were in and on the plug. Not sure if that made any sense. Either way, it alleviates having to jack the car up.
Yep, having the right tool for the job is key. I've never had to jack up the engine to do the driver's side...but I did scrape the heck out of my knuckles.
I did that too except my spark plug socket's gasket had too much of a grip on the plug so when I tried to take it out the extension popped out of the socket :shock: Things got inventive from there.
I didn't have to jack the car up either... One thing you forgot to mention was to use a torque wrench on the plug. I torqued mine down to 15ft/lbs and they were pre-gapped at .028 to begin with. Looks like we used similar plugs (yours were probably NGK IK22 whereas I had the JDM version, the VK22). Mine were quite a bit worse though... Gaps varied between .037 to .074 on the one that was missing its tip. No wonder my engine was misfiring!
At what kind of mileage do you replace spark plugs? Now with my car getting modified and what not I wonder how my stockers are doing. Are they ever replaced in any of the major services at the dealership?
Wow, look at those plugs! This writeup makes me appreciate having my coilpacks/plugs on the top of my engine. Of course they have to be up there because I burn up so many coilpacks!
That sounds about right for plats. Usually you'd want to be replacing coppers every 2-3 oil changes. Iridiums are just for lazy people who never want to replace their plugs. I'm going to have to find a copper replacement for my plugs sometime. I think my OEM plugs are iridium :x
Any reason why you replaced the platinum spark plugs with standard ones? Changing heat range or something? I replaced mine with Denso Iridiums....and they were "fun" to replace.
sweet DIY. I didn't even know the WRX had plugs! hahaha! at least now i know where to find them. thanks! btw - if everyone's plugs look so bad after they take them out (ie gapping, breaking), why don't we replace them earlier than 60k?
Reason you'd want copper plugs instead of platinum or iridium is because copper is quite a bit more conductive than the other two materials. The advantage to platinum and iridium are that they last longer. Iridium offer about twice the condictivity as platinum plugs though, but copper is about 6 times as conductive as platinum (3x as iridium).
Stock. I had 1-step colder NGK coppers in for almost 10k and replaced them with new stockers. The coppers appeared to be a bit too cold for my setup -- only the tips of the electrodes were brown; the rest of the plug was black.
