Goldenpony

Well, have a week and a couple hundred miles on the new Champions. Car is running great.

Lifter583

Glad to hear they are performing well, I have mine on order and will be putting them in soon. BTW my mechanic friend said to run a couple of tanks with Seafoam injector cleaner added, should help the carbon buildup. I am doing that now, I hope the Mustang gods are with me on the plug change! Just turned over 12000 miles

Burnsy

you should be fine with only 12K miles lifter

sailing220

I ran 2 tanks with Seafoam before I changed mine. I used Deep Creep as a penetrating lubricant. None of mine broke (very relieving night) but they all had a serious amount of carbon on them.

I put the 7989 Champions in and have driven about 800 miles on them, no problems at all.

*phew*

pat123

Do they actually make the car run better or are they just safer to use?

Lifter583

Thanks guys I am feeling more confident with your posts. I tooplanned on using deep creep for the pre removal soak.

sailing220

You don't know about the spark plug issue, do you pat123?

The stock ones are a crappy 2 piece design that snap off in the head upon removal, so a bunch of people are switching to one piece designs. Go to the "S197 Info Threads" sticky post and click on the spark plug thread the bottom for more info.

cdawg

I just installed mine tonight. My car is almost three years old but only has 6,500 miles. I followed the TSB to the letter, used the Motorcraft carb cleaner, let it soak about 45 minutes on a room temperature engine. Every one of the plugs came out easily, no resistance at all, except the second one back on the passenger side. Had the torque wrench set on 33lbs to break them loose the 1/4 turn per the TSB, and it would not come loose. I finally cranked the wrench up to about 38lbs and it broke loose, but scared me to death. All of the plugs had a small amount of carbon, the one that was tight had just a little more. The carb cleaner absolutely liquifies the carbon on the plugs.

Gapped the Champions to .045" and installed, put a little of the nickel anti-sieze on the lower shaft, although not sure it will be needed with the one piece plugs. Oddly, one of the Champions had what looked like a number "7" punched in the back of one of the electrodes. Weird. I don't think it will cause problems, as it is on the outside of the electrode, but going to order one more plug and replace it just in case.

I cannot tell the difference in performance. They seem the same as the factory plugs.

Edit: The more I drive the car, the more I think the Champions perform better than the originals.

mbishop1279

Installed a set of Champions this week. I was concerned about some negative things I have seen posted over the past few weeks.( bad gaps, electrodes out of alignment, breakage of insulator.) I received the plugs from Rock Auto in about 3 days. The cost was less than 10.00 per plug plus 2.00 rebate.

When I got the plugs I inspected each one and the gaps was near perfect, no problems with electrodes or insulators.

I gaped at .045 and applied M/C nickel antiseize.

The car runs great and if anything puts out more power.

I am running Rousch CAI and Predator 93 Octane tune.

I think the problems with the early Champions may have been early production start up problems.

For the ones I recieved everything looks good.

I went to O'Reillys to check on pricing before I ordered from Rock Auto and they wanted 22.00 per plug. I also had them on order from Summitt at 12.95 but they had a May 18 ship date.

Hopefully they will continue to perform well. I just wanted the stock plugs out.

[IMG]local://upfiles/96963/3224CB8435754C9387637A8C7094F5C6.jpg[/IMG]

surf808

Do the Champions really need the anti seize? Do you just put it on for peice of mind? Where and how much did you get it for.