[Jackpine]

Originally Posted by Alcohol5LT

Hey ya'll,

So I got my customs tunes a couple of months ago, I absolutely love the 87 performance turn and everything has been amazing. Recently, as my truck approached 75,000 miles, I opted to change my spark plugs as my 2 piece 3v plugs have such an issue with breaking. My local ford dealer (at least the one thats close to me that I would trust to take my truck to) had told me of their issues getting the motorcraft plugs out (they even kept a basket of broken spark plugs on their service desk). As such, I opted to try to the champion 7879 (I never thought a ford dealer wouldn't laugh at my idea to change them to champion, these guys thought it wasn't a bad an idea). I've had them in for probably 2500 miles, and so far they've done pretty well... however, my truck has started to develop a rough idle, only in gear and in park. I've tried bumping the idle speed up 50 rpm, and cleaned my MAF, to no real avail. What i'm wondering is there anything gryphon wise I might want to look at changing since i'm no longer running the factory plugs? I'm looking at spark advance mostly, something I normally wouldn't play with, or anything else?. I know our truck have a tendency to develop a rough idle, and this may just be something completely unrelated to this, just wondering if anybody had any ideas. Thanks!!!

BTW, anybody in the Athens- GA area, Crawford ford got all my spark plugs out no problem, and their charge for broken plugs is lower than anybody else within 100 miles.

In all the time I've been haunting F150 forums, I've NEVER heard anyone say anything positive about Champion plugs in Ford trucks. Lawnmowers now, that's a different story.

Every account that I've read regarding Champions talks about poor running within 10,000 miles of installation. I suspect the plugs are the cause of your poor idle. If so, tuning will not help.

I've only heard good things about Motorcraft (in spite of the poor 2-piece design) and Brisk plugs. Autolite plugs rank right along side of Champions in the Forums. And, I've not heard anything good about Bosch or any of the Japanese brands. I know I plan to reinstall Motorcraft plugs when I change mine (which will be probably toward the end of Summer).

Why Champions don't work is beyond me. About the only thing that can be wrong is that they run either colder or hotter than the OEM plugs and that causes them to fail. I'd have to guess they might run colder and that would cause them to foul. If you remove yours, I'd like to see what they look like.

- Jack