Welcome, and thank you!

 

Well, worked all afternoon changing plugs in my '06 GT 'vert. The old plugs were Champions (#7989). Even though I installed them using nickel anti size- several of them were still quite hard to remove. But since they were one piece Champions, they came out in one piece. This set had 60K miles on them. I was fairly surprised that the gap on the old plugs had opened up quite a bit.
Installed the new Champions with a gap of .044" using a little graphite on the threads, and nickel anti-size on the "barrel" of the plugs. Torqued them to 25 ft/lbs.
The old girl runs like a new pony.

 

Goldenpony, great job of doing it by the book. The opening of the gap is quite normal with most plugs. This sometimes means the heat range might be one number to hot. In your case, I wouldn't worry. This sounds like a normal issue. Enjoy your ride.