100,000 mile spark plug chang for polution?

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I am about to change my plugs on a 2011 Fusion 2.5 with 98,800 miles on it. My fuel mileage has not dropped a drop. My manual says change at 100,000.

My question is the normal requirement by manufactures to change at 100,000 or whatever for pollution control or for other reasons?
 
Originally Posted By: callbay
I am about to change my plugs on a 2011 Fusion 2.5 with 98,800 miles on it. My fuel mileage has not dropped a drop. My manual says change at 100,000.

My question is the normal requirement by manufactures to change at 100,000 or whatever for pollution control or for other reasons?

Possibly. You don't want to run your car with plugs that misfire which could affect pollution controls.
 
I changed the OEM plugs in my 1996 Mystique at ~ 120,000 miles. Wide worn gap, but gas mileage was unchanged. Why take a chance with old plugs?
 
I changed the plugs(NGK) in my 2007 Fusion 2.3 at 120K. I plan to change them again soon. However the engine still runs great but plugs are cheap enough to change them every 100K.
 
Back in the day , it seemed a car needed a tune up ( plugs , points , condenser , timing ) every 10,000 - 15,000 miles .

I also have changed plugs at over 100,000 miles . It helped a little , but the car was not running that bad . I was trying to chase down a CEL , which turned out to be something completely different .

But changing plugs was a positive measure , anyway .
 
Chang is the commonest Chinese name, so in a sense it stands for pollution.

"Chang for polution" might in fact be an election slogan, here or in Hong Kong.

They can't spell English either.
 
Originally Posted By: WyrTwister
Back in the day , it seemed a car needed a tune up ( plugs , points , condenser , timing ) every 10,000 - 15,000 miles .

I also have changed plugs at over 100,000 miles . It helped a little , but the car was not running that bad . I was trying to chase down a CEL , which turned out to be something completely different .

But changing plugs was a positive measure , anyway .


But there are still people out there who will argue that distributors with points and condenser are better!
 
My Capri still has a conventional points and condenser ignition system and it's just fine, the points and condensers and rotor arms and distributor caps are cheap.
And whenever it doesnt want to start ( which is rare ) i always have a whole spare "kit" and usually one of the things i mentioned earlier needs changing and it's running great again.
The spark may not be as good as with electronic ignition, specially at high rpms but it runs great and whenever i check the plugs they are fine and clean.
 
Originally Posted By: zzyzzx
At 100K at the very least, they need to be regapped. Emphasis on at least, since they should have been regapped long ago.

You don't "re-gap" iridium.

Outside of aviation, I've never seen a need to clean or re-gap plus. Automotive plugs are either dirt cheap or last forever.
 
Electronic ignition is one of the great improvements in car design .

You can keep your distributor w/ points & condenser .
 
Even if you haven’t noticed a decline in fuel economy it’s most likely there, just small. With today’s gas prices even a very small unnoticeable drop in fuel mileage will rapidly burn up the cost of a new set of plugs. I would change them.
 
Probably not much drop in fuel economy, but more energy from the ignition system is necessary to fire across the larger gap. Less margin for error, starting in extreme cold conditions, etc.
 
Pfft.. 100,000 miles on the factory iridium plugs in this engine is child's play... Try 215,000 miles on the factory plugs.

In my 2010 Fusion, same engine as yours, my plugs came out at 215,000 miles.. I was able to verify that they were indeed the factory stock plugs.

This is a pic of one of the plugs:
m7chhg.jpg


Details can be found in this thread here


Realistically, they probably could have gone longer, but since I had them out, I put new ones in anyways. Plugs are relatively cheap, and so having new ones in there bought me another (approximately) 100k.
 
The change interval for the plugs in my X3 was also 100k; I changed them at around 120k. Mileage remained unchanged.
 
I changed out mine with genuine Toyota plugs at 99k
and again with Denso (the size and brand in the manual) at 190k

I strongly recommend OE plugs or whatever the manual asks for
Mine said Denso or NGK

You might have luck with motorcraft plugs
 
I would not wait for the plugs to misfire since that starts to fry the cat converters, most cars have at least
2 or more! Most misfires that start to damage cat converters can't be felt until it's bad.

Most engine computers can detect and even count misfires and only set off dash light when it reaches a threshold.

On a 4 cylinder engine the plugs are usually super easy to get at compared to a V6 in a FWD!

In my case, my V6 FWD, the rear plugs are hard to get at and you can't even see them, you have to change them by 'feel'.
I replaced all the plugs at 120K miles, no misfire data recorded, but I'm gentle on the car and engine.
 
I sold a 2000 Intrepid with the original plugs 136,000 miles. I took them out once and looked at them and gapped them. Back in they went. Never saw any reduction in gas mileage so never replaced them.
 
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