NGK Iridium Plugs on my 99 5.0 AWD Pros/Cons???? | Ford Explorer Forums

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NGK Iridium Plugs on my 99 5.0 AWD Pros/Cons????

RTF_EXPLORER

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Year, Model & Trim Level
1999 Ford Explorer-5.0AWD
Should I go with the NGK Iridium's for my 99 Explorer 5.0 AWD? I was told they are bad & I should stick with Motorcraft & some say they are far superior to Motorcraft need some help to make my mind up what are the pros & cons?
 



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They are no better or worse. Your engine won't know the difference. The NGK Iridium and Motorcraft Iridium plugs are both high quality plugs and will give you no reason to complain about them.
 






Agree with NGK, if you can't get OEM Motorcraft or Autolite.
Why switch from the plugs that have worked well for so long?
 






Yeah, what they said.
 






Thanks to everyone. I just installed the NGK's and wow what a difference in part because I have 2 new MSD coils I installed last week. Now just debating on which wires to go with. My weekly check i am chipping away at the parts.......lol
 






Thanks to everyone. I just installed the NGK's and wow what a difference in part because I have 2 new MSD coils I installed last week. Now just debating on which wires to go with. My weekly check i am chipping away at the parts.......lol

It's all in your head, my friend. The only reason you'd notice a difference is if your old plugs were shot. Then ANY plugs would make a difference.

I've used MSD coils, Screamin Demon coils and OEM and there is no real performance gain from aftermarket over OEM. I use MSD just because they're red (matches some of the other goodies under my hood). Same goes for wires. I've used many different aftermarket wires and there is no performance gain over OEM.

At the end of the day, the performance gains over OEM by changing plugs, coils or wires to any aftermarket parts are purely psychological.

Been there, done that. ;)
 






It's all in your head, my friend. The only reason you'd notice a difference is if your old plugs were shot. Then ANY plugs would make a difference.

I've used MSD coils, Screamin Demon coils and OEM and there is no real performance gain from aftermarket over OEM. I use MSD just because they're red (matches some of the other goodies under my hood). Same goes for wires. I've used many different aftermarket wires and there is no performance gain over OEM.

At the end of the day, the performance gains over OEM by changing plugs, coils or wires to any aftermarket parts are purely psychological.

Been there, done that. ;)

Oh no gotta schedule another appointment with my "SHRINK"......:D

Well lets just say after I bought it 2 weeks ago; ran rough-acceleration was rough idle was rough. Installed the "physiological red coils" and it made a world of difference ran much smoother & idled much nicer... This week I installed the "psychological NGK's" and again world of a difference to me; it had autolite platinum's in there but they didn't look to bad at all......:eek: Dunno about you; but I hear voices in my head & they tell me to do things like buy only aftermarket stuff............;)
 






The point he was trying to make probably came off the wrong way.

What he was saying is that if you are experiencing an improvement, it is because the old components were slightly worn out. Even if your old plugs don't look that bad, their resistance and gap slowly change with use in ways that are not obvious to the naked eye. Coils are the same way, and just swapping components means taking harnesses or wires off that might have built up a small amount of corrosion or resistance between them, and that gets scraped off when the wires are moved.

Anyway, the point that he was trying to make is that those things are no better than the parts they replaced if the parts they replaced were new. Aftermarket coils don't perform any better than OEM ones, and the same can be said with plugs. All any of those things are going to do is ignite your gasoline in your combustion chamber. They expose a combustible mix of fuel to an electrical current that is of a high enough voltage to arc a gap on a plug, and thus create plasma in the gap. This plasma heats the fuel mixture around itself causing combustion. Any energy beyond what is required to heat the mixture the arc comes into contact with beyond the point of ignition is wasted, therefore, even if those components did make more, it would be a waste unless you could set your gap on your plugs much larger than OEM, which you didn't. Even if you did, you would only be talking about a few thousandths of an inch, and you are still in a zero sum game, since the electricity used to ignite the fuel comes from the engine running... High power ignition and such is only really going to help on vehicles that run very high RPMs and very high compression or aggressive ignition and valve timing, things that make combustion difficult. On a daily driver, you will never see a difference outside of a few tenths or hundredths of a horsepower, and the air temperature or a billion RANDOM variables can have more of an effect than that.

In short, it is good to buy quality parts to replace old ones, but what he was getting at was not to fall into the trap of buying replacements just because they are aftermarket and have some slick advertising. You need to spend the money on good parts, but don't bother buying the more expensive stuff just because it says it can do it better than the OEM replacement. Making cars faster or better isn't just about buying the fanciest stuff, it is about intelligent tuning and engineering. Beyond that, the most anything else is going to provide is a placebo effect. Always remember, the more horsepower your butt-dyno thinks your engine is making is inversely proportional to how heavy or full your wallet is.
 






Thanks Find. You nailed exactly what I was saying.

There are no "better" parts than OEM when it comes to plugs, coils and wires for the 5.0 so if all else fails, you can't go wrong with them. Using other options is not a bad thing, but don't ever expect true performance gains by doing so.

I currently have MSD coils, 6 of 8 of my wires are aftermarket (The other 2 are my best defense against the heat of Torque Monster Headers) and to be honest, I can't remember if I'm using Autolite Iridiums or standard issue Motorcraft right now. I have never found a true performance gain in swapping out OEM. I just like the looks of the coils and wires. :)
 






I should also note that, though I pointed out you can increase your gap on a stronger spark, you can't do that much either, since too much larger and the spark jumps to the arm of the electrode or the body of the plug which shrouds the flame kernel.
 






The point he was trying to make probably came off the wrong way.

What he was saying is that if you are experiencing an improvement, it is because the old components were slightly worn out. Even if your old plugs don't look that bad, their resistance and gap slowly change with use in ways that are not obvious to the naked eye. Coils are the same way, and just swapping components means taking harnesses or wires off that might have built up a small amount of corrosion or resistance between them, and that gets scraped off when the wires are moved.

Anyway, the point that he was trying to make is that those things are no better than the parts they replaced if the parts they replaced were new. Aftermarket coils don't perform any better than OEM ones, and the same can be said with plugs. All any of those things are going to do is ignite your gasoline in your combustion chamber. They expose a combustible mix of fuel to an electrical current that is of a high enough voltage to arc a gap on a plug, and thus create plasma in the gap. This plasma heats the fuel mixture around itself causing combustion. Any energy beyond what is required to heat the mixture the arc comes into contact with beyond the point of ignition is wasted, therefore, even if those components did make more, it would be a waste unless you could set your gap on your plugs much larger than OEM, which you didn't. Even if you did, you would only be talking about a few thousandths of an inch, and you are still in a zero sum game, since the electricity used to ignite the fuel comes from the engine running... High power ignition and such is only really going to help on vehicles that run very high RPMs and very high compression or aggressive ignition and valve timing, things that make combustion difficult. On a daily driver, you will never see a difference outside of a few tenths or hundredths of a horsepower, and the air temperature or a billion RANDOM variables can have more of an effect than that.

In short, it is good to buy quality parts to replace old ones, but what he was getting at was not to fall into the trap of buying replacements just because they are aftermarket and have some slick advertising. You need to spend the money on good parts, but don't bother buying the more expensive stuff just because it says it can do it better than the OEM replacement. Making cars faster or better isn't just about buying the fanciest stuff, it is about intelligent tuning and engineering. Beyond that, the most anything else is going to provide is a placebo effect. Always remember, the more horsepower your butt-dyno thinks your engine is making is inversely proportional to how heavy or full your wallet is.

Your point was received very well ;); hence its the internet and that's why I replied with the similes and what not sometimes its hard to differentiate when someone is replying the tone or mood they are in. I was just my sarcastic nature & meant nothing by way of my reply. I hear you and agree with most of what you and others had to say. Although my brake job coming up I will be going OEM I get it at employee cost.....:D
 






I just installed autolite iridium plugs in my 98 ranger with 185K on it, and it runs better than I ever remember it running. No bogging and very responsive. I only did the 4 exhaust side and am very impressed! I've seen cars run better from a tune up but this is very noticable in smoothness, idle and soon to know if any fuel economy improvement. It is only a 4 cyl. with a Granatelli MAF and a k/n filter. The other plugs did have about 100K on them and they were platinum but the electrode was burned off 2 of them. It ran fine before but had a little miss when cold idle. I changed the 4 wires on that side too with bosch 8mm wires. Highly reccomend iridium.
 












I just installed autolite iridium plugs in my 98 ranger with 185K on it, and it runs better than I ever remember it running.

The other plugs did have about 100K on them and they were platinum but the electrode was burned off 2 of them.
Any surprise it runs better? New spark plugs have electrodes. ;)
 






I've never seen the platinum wear off the end of the plug, and I've been working on cars since 1972. Also it never ran that smooth when I changed all 8 plugs last time, this time was only 4.
 






I've seen it happen a lot of time, also, if you only replaced 4 plugs at once, you must not have learned much about working on cars since 1972.
 






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