Originally Posted by RiddleOfSteel (Post 21231279)

Over the extended Thanksgiving weekend, I was able to get my sudden rolling bucket of woes Z28 Camaro (get one thing fixed, and down go the dominoes!) down three hours to see family as I had been denied (by said car issues) at the beginning of November. It was a great time, though I had business to attend to. Thwarted by any combination of rain, lack of light, weekend time (aka day light), a steep and exposed apartment complex driveway, and not being able to work on things curb side, it would be the shed/shop at my parents' place, in 35° weather (ok, with closed doors and a propane heater) where the car would be worked on. Five and a half years ago, I changed plugs in this car. NGK iridium plugs meant to go 100k miles. 55,000 miles in, I pull one and see it gapped at 0.064"--spec is 0.050" and I know I'm stressing the ignition system. Long pre-story short, all eight plugs are changed over the course of two sessions over two days, roughly three hours a piece. To say that changing plugs on an LT1 Camaro with aftermarket headers is difficult is an understatement. Scraped knuckles, bruised and cut backs-of-hands, a big muscle cramp while under the car, and the worst angles and leverages imaginable (both above and below the engine) made for yet another trying effort. And all for semi-naught as an oil leak repair that I paid good money for (very recently) failed, causing hot oil to decently leak out of the engine and onto the block and transmission bellhousing. Which means smoke/steam. Not good to see, and not good to smell. I will be making an appointment to bring it in again for what will likely be warranty work, and hopefully a redone job will be successful.

Below are the plugs in pretty accurate order (the dark ones are completely correct though), with the top of the photo representing the front of the engine. All gaps are huge and from what I can surmise, the same as they were when I bought them. This means that Previous ROS likely didn't gap the plugs, even if the car ran flawlessly afterwards. Dark plug on the passenger side had dirt/oil(?) all over its threads for no reason (nothing leaking from above on the heads) and didn't smell at all like anything. Dark plug on the driver's side had actually backed out a bit and was loose in its threading--the source of one of my exhaust ticks! I have a very quiet engine bay for the first time in years.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...87ff90997f.jpg

Originally Posted by merziac (Post 21231952)

Modern Electronic ignition is pretty hard to stress, usually has many times what is needed on tap. Not sure about the newer like yours version and I'm not a GM guy but back in the day I helped several friends get various builds going right with early HEI which could had at the junkyard by the truckload for virtually pennies.

They would build a motor that didn't want to run well, too much compression, crappy gas, poor tuning, etc, screw around and often get it to not run at all, enter HEI and all H**L would break loose, start right up and go like nobody's business always amazing, so simple, many engine builders with egg on their face.

Ford's version would fire 10 year old plugs with no center electrode left sticking out of the porcelain, well over 0.100. I have a spark tester that has no center electrode for this very thing. I have run it on many cars for hours and under load while driving. Any car that ran with it ran just fine, plenty of voltage in reserve.

All that being said, some brands don't like some brands, in general 80's and 90's Fords didn't like Bosch plugs and would run ok while not passing DEQ. Also lots of problems with wizz-bang platinum, iridium, hot rod, snake oil, mega $$$ plugs. When they had lot rot and the battery went dead, flooding, jumping and cranking would foul them to the point where the plugs had to taken out and cleaned to get them going again, regular copper plugs would always fire up if you got it cranking good. ;)

Originally Posted by ryansu (Post 21232188)

Originally Posted by SurferRosa (Post 21232561)

You rode it without a rear brake? I'm telling mom!

Originally Posted by noglider (Post 21233165)

I don't even use my rear brake.

Originally Posted by noglider (Post 21233165)

I don't even use my rear brake.

Originally Posted by stardognine (Post 21233537)

Roger that, Roger. 😉 It took me awhile to get that idea into practice, because of learning wrong, but yeah, the front is the better choice. 😎

Originally Posted by stardognine (Post 21234012)

Who ever said "only" use the front brake? Not me, who you quoted. 😛😉 I'd think most of us here would just assume, that you still need to use good judgement, in any given situation. 😉

That said, for normal riding (with a touring load, in my case) on dry roads, the front brake works much better. ✌️

Originally Posted by DQRider (Post 21234086)

Yeah, I think there is a virulent strain of Cranky Flu going around, mostly due to the crappy winter weather most of us are experiencing, but also the added strain of the holiday season.