two tools to ADD to your kit when doing Spark Plug Changes

[FinalImpact]

We all know the angle to drop the plugs back into the valve cover is too tight to have the socket and the extension on as it just won't clear the pan under the battery box on couple plugs. Here are two things that make it safe and simple so you don't end up dropping plugs and sockets in the hole and hoping for the best that the plug is not damaged!

Silicone tubing! Yes, so simple! With a 12" piece of silicone tubing (found at RC stores as fuel tubing) place the tubing on the plug tip, run the tubing through the socket, add a tiny spot of oil to the first couple of threads and drop the plug & socket into the hole lowering it with the hose. When it hits bottom, twist the hose while holding it towards the rear of the bike until the threads start. Because the tubing is so pliable its near impossible to cross thread.

Pull up on the tubing and the plug and socket stay put. Insert 3" extension and torque to spec.

Also, for REMOVING the socket or plug a flexible magnet on a nylon stick is perfect! This thing is life savor on many occasions. You should have one!

My plug socket was a tad worn and wouldn't hold these tiny plugs well so I just lowered them in and pulled the tube out. I think I had them all in tight in less than 6 minutes.

Also - be sure to snug up up the plug wire into the cap. It should tighten clockwise and you'll feel a bit of resistance as the wire bottoms in the cap. If it spins freely, cut off a small section (1/4") and thread it back on.

FWIW: Here are some plugs after 15,000 miles. . . I threw them back in the hole! I'll replace them at 20,000 . . .

 

[motojoe122]

Great addition to a potentially frustrating chore! Plugs look good for 15k. I'm at 13k now, maybe I'll wait til 20k too:spank:

 

[FinalImpact]

Do I dare say my own bike was headed towards the land of misfits??? Ya, last couple of 300 mile rides she picked up a vibes that most females would die for! :spank: :spank: :spank:
Figuring the weakest link on the Fiz is the ignition I had to look for it and when I found the plugs in pristine condition I gave all the caps a twist. Everyone one of them was loose and number 4 didn't snug up so I removed the cap it cut the wire back. It snugged in there nicely! I just got back from a ride and man is it smooth again! No vibes what so ever!

This is the one and only thing I went after and well, thankfully the test drive just now says it was Plug Caps FTW!!! I am now looking forward to Sunday's Ride!

So - If you haven't checked your plug caps; DO IT!!!!

 

[motojoe122]

Seems the faster blue ones don't have that problem.....Annnndd here we go ooooo!:BLAA:

 

[FinalImpact]

Seems the faster blue ones don't have that problem.....Annnndd here we go ooooo!:BLAA:

View attachment 44950
Enough said? :BLAA:

 

[philosopheriam]

Why on earth would you go through the trouble of pulling a set of plugs and not replace them?

An hours worth of labor to save, what, $20...

 

[FinalImpact]

Why on earth would you go through the trouble of pulling a set of plugs and not replace them?

An hours worth of labor to save, what, $20...

Solving a problem without throwing money at it has more value than the money itself!
Now I know it WASN'T the plugs. :thumbup: Would we know that if I'd just thrown new ones in?
>Negative! which is much the way of many of your posts. . .

 

[philosopheriam]

Yes, but at 15K, the bike is about due for a set of plugs anyway.

So now you get to go through this again in another 5k.

Sorry dude, I'm a professional mechanic by trade and by nature, I don't like doing things twice. My time is worth money - a lot more than $20 an hour.

My overall point - you're in there, replace them. This is a very different concept than throwing parts at an undiagnosed problem. Spark plugs are a cheap WEAR ITEM.

An yes, some of my posts are negative. I refuse to give people high-fives when they do things that simply do not make sense. Everyone can't always get a trophy.....

 

[philosopheriam]

BTW: not replacing a set of plugs at 15k is very different than not replacing a set of plugs that had under 500mi on them. When diagnosing misfires, I often check wires/plugs first. If I have a relatively new set of plugs, under 1000mi, I won't necessarily replace them. But 15k on a plug in a high-revving motorcycle engine, cmon...

 

[FinalImpact]

Let us follow your line of thought;
I throw new plugs in it because, well they have 15,000 miles on them and walla, the bike runs great for 2000 miles and the problem comes back. By changing ONE thing at a time, i found what was causing a vibration in the bike as I tightened the coil wires into the plug caps. Had i done the plugs AND the caps/wires I would not have known that. From this, we can add value to the forum as whole to pay better attention to the little things. Anyone can say, throw parts at it. But people need to know why and how to do things on their own.

Did you ever think that some of us have different objectives than your own? My time, my bike and my money, Plus the thread was about ways to overcome challenges of tight spaces not about why i didn't spend $20. Feel free to start your on thread about what others should have done.

 

[philosopheriam]

Um, no, I'm not following your line of thought...

You're ASSUMING that the plugs are ok because they look good to the human eye. By replacing them, you establish a baseline, i.e, the probability that a new set of plugs is bad is extremely low, thus, the problem is most likely elsewhere. Mechanics often do this with cheap wear parts, i.e spark plugs.

I'm not critiquing your use of tubing, as this trick works quite well for screwing in plugs and grease fittings in tight quarters.

I'm posting my "negative" response because I know that other readers do in fact read these posts and I do not want them to be led astray by bad diagnostic procedures. If you said to me that your plugs only had 500 to 1000mi on them and you didn't replace them, I'd say ok.

 

[FinalImpact]

Um, no, I'm not following your line of thought...

You're ASSUMING that the plugs are ok because they look good to the human eye. By replacing them, you establish a baseline, i.e, the probability that a new set of plugs is bad is extremely low, thus, the problem is most likely elsewhere. Mechanics often do this with cheap wear parts, i.e spark plugs.

I'm not critiquing your use of tubing, as this trick works quite well for screwing in plugs and grease fittings in tight quarters.

I'm posting my "negative" response because I know that other readers do in fact read these posts and I do not want them to be led astray by bad diagnostic procedures. If you said to me that your plugs only had 500 to 1000mi on them and you didn't replace them, I'd say ok.

You WIN! I bought in to your non-sense argument one time and now you change topics??? :ban: Apparently its no longer about wasting time and labor its now about trouble shooting technique???

Everyone knows that changing one thing at a time delivers the facts (go / no-go) vs shot-gun parts replacement and assuming what "item" fixed it. I think your diagnostic argument has holes in it. . .

/enough for me. . .

 

[ChevyFazer]

Great idea!!! I've used tape in the past on the inside of the socket to hold them in, and on other things where hands can't get but I like this idea much better and will be giving it try!

 

[FinalImpact]

Do I dare say my own bike was headed towards the land of misfits??? Ya, last couple of 300 mile rides she picked up a vibes. . . .
Figuring the weakest link on the Fiz is the ignition I had to look for it and when I found the plugs in pristine condition I gave all the caps a twist. Everyone one of them was loose and number 4 didn't snug up so I removed the cap it cut the wire back. It snugged in there nicely! I just got back from a ride and man is it smooth again! No vibes what so ever!

This is the one and only thing I went after and well, thankfully the test drive just now says it was Plug Caps FTW!!! I am now looking forward to Sunday's Ride!

OK - at the conclusion of our 260 mile ride on Sunday, the Fiz remains vibe free. So I have to ask, did it simply want attention or was there a significant amount of resistance building between the cap and the coil wires? Did taking it apart "DO SOMETHING" or was it actually from tightening the caps?? It ran great before, never skipped a beat, pulled well from any RPM, but over time the whole bike was getting high frequency vibe from 4k up.
Think of it as watching paint fade in the sun as it went unnoticed until the last couple of rides.

Anyway, for now the simple repair seems to have fixed it. I'll keep you posted if anything changes.

 

[Marthy]

Good tips! i used a fuel line before to get them started, worked just as good. I got a set of spark plug socket (small and big one) at Advance Auto Parts (Gear wrench) They are magnet... plugs don't fall

By the way, nice plugs! A/F mixture is looking good!

 

[FinalImpact]

Good tips! i used a fuel line before to get them started, worked just as good. I got a set of spark plug socket (small and big one) at Advance Auto Parts (Gear wrench) They are magnet... plugs don't fall

By the way, nice plugs! A/F mixture is looking good!

Ya, i didn't like the fact that two of the holes were so tight that I stuck the socket in w/out an extension on them and was risking plug damage if I dropped it trying to fit the extension to it. This is what I had on hand so i thought I'd share.

Honestly it wouldn't break my heart if they had more color to them headed towards an even tan color. But no oil, no build up, no burning. I'm Good! :thumbup:

 

[TownsendsFJR1300]

Great tip diagnosing the plug wire and yes the plugs look good...

Having replaced my pulgs with iridiums about 6 months ago(12,000 miles), loosening up the radiator, using a rubber hose to drop the plugs back in the hole made things considerably easier for me... It didn't take 30 minutes total and that's with sneaking in an inch lb torque wrench on each plug.

As for doing it over again or just replace the plugs, YOUR method found the problem and fixed it. Now You (and US) know of this problem (actually there was a recent post where the Yamaha shop found the same problem and shortened a plug wire-arcing). I believe Cliff, yourself and I besides others posted as well on that post.

IMHO, your not just servicing the bike, your diagnosing a problem, now when your ready, you can change the plugs (for maintainance)..

Would it have been easier to replace the plugs right then, sure, but you wouldn't know if, for certain, that was the problem.

 

[Sco]

This may have already been asked, but can you point me to the steps to check the plugs? Do you have to pull the gas tank? radiator hose? is hard to get in there?

 

[FinalImpact]

This may have already been asked, but can you point me to the steps to check the plugs? Do you have to pull the gas tank? radiator hose? is hard to get in there?

Here is an old thread in the How Too, as a Sticky. . . Should be helpful. The bulk of it is on SBN tho. . .

http://www.600riders.com/forum/how-tos/31446-how-change-spark-plugs.html

Most of the work is done from the right side of the bike as the frame rail is in the way on the left side. You can pull the two 10mm bolts from the radiator for a tad more access, be sure to pad the bottom to the hanger doesn't poke the fins and tubes.

Its pretty painless; a ratchet, 3" extension, spark plug socket, some hose and magnet all go towards making it easier than the tool bag items. Look over the threads and ask if you have any questions. . . EDIT: I didn't answer your questions. Tank = no. Hoses and fluid = no.

Oh - Mathy I saw your post about the hose! You beat me too it!

 

[TownsendsFJR1300]

Here is an old thread in the How Too, as a Sticky. . . Should be helpful. The bulk of it is on SBN tho. . .

http://www.600riders.com/forum/how-tos/31446-how-change-spark-plugs.html

Most of the work is done from the right side of the bike as the frame rail is in the way on the left side. You can pull the two 10mm bolts from the radiator for a tad more access, be sure to pad the bottom to the hanger doesn't poke the fins and tubes.

Its pretty painless; a ratchet, 3" extension, spark plug socket, some hose and magnet all go towards making it easier than the tool bag items. Look over the threads and ask if you have any questions. . . EDIT: I didn't answer your questions. Tank = no. Hoses and fluid = no.

Oh - Mathy I saw your post about the hose! You beat me too it!

+1 on ALL the above.

The only things I would add is to be very gentle with the plug wires. If they haven't been out for awhile, the caps WILL be sticky in the valve cover. I put a little bit of dilectric grease on the plug boot edges where it meets the valve cover, makes re-installation much easier.

There have been posts where the cap was NOT fully installed onto the plug. In my experiance, that's exactly why..

If you have an air compressor (not mandatory), blow out the plug holes before you pull the plugs, (just in case any crap got in there)..

And NO lube, anti-seize, anything, on the new plugs going in, just dry and clean. It'll screw up the torque readings and the plug threads (at least NGK) have a coating on the steel threads for aluminum heads..