I probably need new spark plugs. Car has almost 41K on the clock and honestly have felt no need to change them until now. Car is idling strangley (just drops sometimes, came close to stalling itself once), low down power has dropped considerably, and just feels sluggish overall. Tomorrow I'm going to pull the plugs and make sure they're good and worn out before I go and buy new ones.

Are the OEM plugs really the best? I don't wanna cheap out on my car but seriously...$20 a pop? I'll cough it up if I have to or really should, but are the OEM plugs really worth twice as much as other plugs? I'd prefer not to order online just cuz of the wait. Any decent plugs at say Autozone or somewhere I could just drive five minutes up the road and be done with it?

 

Don't worry, they will be.

Some folks use RX-7 plugs. But not exactly the same dimensions and you have to know what you're doing. The info is here if you want to go that way. Cheaper, but also more frequent replacement.

imo, if $80 gets you another 40,000 miles you should put it in perspective. You'll probably spend over $4000 on gasoline in that time.

 

If you have 40K and running on original coils you should change those as well. They're $30 a piece.

 

Hmmm. There goes my midpipe fund. But maintenance comes before toys so whatever. I'll put it on a lift tomorrow and take a look. Got my spark plug socket today before work, now I just need some anti-seize and the plugs (hopefully can get at the same store =/).

 

Great. No typical shop has my plugs and I didn't realize that today is Sunday so the Mazda dealer is closed. I work tomorrow so looks like I'll have to buy and swap out on Tuesday. Ugh.

 

Prepare for sticker shock if you price them at the dealer's parts counter. They could ask for more than $200 for a set. Call and ask for a price before taking a trip over there.

Places like Autozone might be able to special order them at the $20 apiece price.

Mazmart had a group buy in February at $81 a set, shipped in the US. They may still have some left. Look for the thread in the Mazmart vendor forum. If they're out, try BHR or sparkplugs.com.

Ken

 

Thanks much. I'd much rather get them from Autozone or somewhere other than the dealer. I hate the one here. Took them 2 weeks to get me some splashguard pins. So I'm sure they'll screw something like a spark plug order up even worse. That and since it comes from the dealer they'll be sure to last an additional -2000 miles. They're my last resort, trust me.


Just pulled my plugs. Was a lot easier than I thought and took maybe an hour on a vehicle I've never done it before on. Pulled the leading front and rear rotor plugs. They actually didn't look that bad. Had that 'milk chocolate' brown kind of color with patches of black here and there. I'll try and upload a pic if I can. Nothing serious. And yeah taking them out was a breeze. Had to borrow a 3/8's drive socket cuz I thought I could squeeze my 1/2 drive in there (thats what my spark plug socket is for) but that didn't work out too well. I'll go back to Sears and search again for a 3/8's drive socket. But again the plugs don't look bad at all. I COULD replace them (and I probably will in the next week or so) but they could probably stay in for a while longer.

 

plugs are some of the best insurance on an rx-8 money can buy but you need to taylor your plugs to your driving habits.most dealer's will only carry one style or heat range of plug.which will usually be 9's for leading and 7's for trailing.ngk bumped up the heatrange early on to combat oil fouling which they had big problems with in 04 with an analog 02 sens.if your using big fuel and driving the crap out of it constintly you would be better off running a cooler leading plug like a/n 7 or8.you can ask for them at you mazda dealer or ngk retailer.also i stress to change the wires and coils at the same time.the coils are bad for blowing voltage out the bottom and the wires are bad for the little steel clips inside the boots at the plug rusting "on the leading plugs mostly" due to road moisture.then even only if you change plugs or an ign component on a rx u must reset nv-ram. "kam"

 

i got what sounds like the same idling problem, but it started happing after i put an intake in it. Although it dose not idle to bad it usually revs up to 2000 rpms n down n i got about 44k on it