Plugs for some older vehicles and equipment can be very difficult to acquire, so it makes perfect sense to reuse the old plugs.

Thank You Jay & Mr. Skinned Knuckle. Once again I've learned something from the videos .as the Guy said, some spark plugs are difficult to find making cleaning them a necessity . Jay, your the Best ! Thank You for keeping these Beautiful Old Machines Alive & Actually riding & driving them.

Back when I was young a lived in MN I always owned old used cars and every fall it was check the plugs, new points and condenser. The years went by and I moved to a warmer climate. Cars no longer had points. My memory wasn't as good as it used to be. "Didn't I just put in new plugs a few years ago"? I thought as my vehicle started killing at the stop lights after it warmed up on the way to work. "Maybe I should check the distributer cap". It was worn. Later the same thing happened. It would stall at stop lights in the morning on my way to work. "Could use some new plug wires" I thought and yes, they were a bit old, and it ran fine for a while. But the old problem returned, only this time it wouldn't start at all. I called a tow truck. I was stalled at a busy intersection during rush hour traffic. It went to the shop. I told them about my troubles, saying it seemed to me to be an intermittent thing. They said they would "check it out." The next day they said it was running fine and I could pick it up if I wanted to. So I did. I caution you now about garages that also have a towing company. A week later I called them again with a stall at a stop light. It was back at their shop for days, and I called and they said "Well, it's not doing anything wrong now. You can pick it up if you want." I said there's something wrong. They said, "Well we can't diagnose it if it's not doing it now. We don't know what's wrong. I asked them what it could be. And told them to replace a few parts. I was back again for another tow. To make a long story short, $1500.00 dollars later, I told them that it wasn't running so well, and seemed like it was about to stall. On the phone they guy says, "Have you checked the spark plugs?" Turns out they all had worn down and all had about 52 thousands gap, and when the motor got warmed up, it must have just said it was tired of jumping all that .... Check yer plugs.

Great Job Jay keep up the good work, these are invaluable tips for working on old cars!

I love that you're doing mechanic videos. We all appreciate the information that is being shared.. thanks!

Awesome vid. Thanks Jay.

Good stuff. More of these please.

Cool! Thank you so much.

I did these steps like 5 years ago. It does make the engine run smoother.

Because that's how you learn to not be a throw away society, we were growing up, us old timers learned how to break down an engine just so you would know how to fix things. Years ago guys took pride in maintaining there cars and trucks, from lubing to replacing valves. Now days they want you to believe that you need to throw away spark plugs in order to keep you coming back, of course if it needs new parts, by all means buy them.

Way to go Niel; good info.

Jay, your such a nice guy

I always used to stiff wire brush, and a soft wire brush. I used the tips of the Stiff wire brush needles to get the crowd out from the insulator coil Curve, and then soft wire brush to clean up and rap all of the dirt from the contacts. It always worked for me. And like are always ran perfect, or at least my bikes did anyway.. If anyone seen one of the new orbital multi point contact plugs, they are fabulous, used in high-performance racing bikes and Formula 1 engines with 8 contact electrodes orbiting the negatrode.

Brings back old memories of when I actually had to work on my car!

Jay, I don't know if you watch your videos/read the comments, but I live your videos. Keep up the great work!

Thanks for knowledge about spark plugs but what about that 500cc Scot Squirrel in the background?

Great video, I also leaned something today.

i learned about the wire gap checker. thanks guys

Jay rocks!

that was the most useful video yet

yeah, i'm like that too. idk who the new guy is gonna be but jay is the man for the job.

Damn It! I've been using flat gauge tools and sand blaster cleaners! Oh well, glad to learn something new.

great tips , especially the gaping with wire an cleaning the inside of plug . now to get a torque wrench OMG. me bad . Thanks Jay . best

1:15 "Look at the plug. If the tip is wet, sniff it" Wise words.

Hey jay how are you ? What do you recommend as a first buyer classic ?

What about glass beads in the media blasters? I was told years ago sand is to abrasive to glass?

It used to be pretty easy to 'read' plugs back in the day, but then they brought in unleaded fuel, and they don't 'read' so clearly after that, the fuel leaves almost no deposit or colour. That's here in Australia, I don't know how it works in the US but I can't see it being very different. So tetra-ethyl-lead is useful for improving the octane of the fuel, but it's also useful for leaving something on the plug that you can read.

It's cool to know how to maintain a set of spark plugs.

BIG thank you to both ! Jay what about retirement you and Neil could team up and have your own show?

When plugs were expensive.(70's) we sand blasted them and the cleaning machine had a spark tester as well...I yous'd to test all the new champion plugs and 50% of them were bad out of the box..I love those old cleaners.

jay cares because he has cars that old and even older. its called knowledge. share it.

Its funny, i'm from england and this is all i see of jay, its hard to imagine him as a talk show host

nice

just ordered 6x NGK Laser Platinum SPARK PLUGS SPARKPLUGS BMW 728 2.8 E38 :)

In general aviation, it's common practice to test and clean spark plugs instead of just replacing them with new ones. Recip engine plugs run anywhere from $25 to $100 each.

I love it.....'OLDER' cars, pre 1950...ha! I could listed to him speak all day...good dude

Good

for all you guys saying, "just buy new ones." plugs for a Cord or Packard are probably not easy to find.

in the old days before exhaust gas analyzers and inexpensive air/fuel gauges that use an o2 sensor, car tuners had to use their eyes, their brains and sometimes make guesses when tuning engines. and they usually fouled up sets of brand new plugs. so, sandblasting became a normal thing to do during that process. i did it when i was a teenager and still do it today and still have my vixen blaster on the wall of my garage, but i use ground walnut shells in a custom hopper that separates the powdered shell and keeps the blaster fed with ground shell. a set of plugs is too expensive to throw away when they are practically new.

best guy to come on JLG..

What about when you beef up your ignition system and can run a larger gap? How wider can you go?

maybe jay has found himself a mentor/father figure. it's his channel he can do whatever he wants. its clear they have good chemistry, they are both carguys.

how do you calculate the right amount of torque to a plug when anti seize is applied because there is less friction between the plug and the head?

Jay, Now they are saying not to use anti-seize on plugs for newer cars unless the plug manufacturer states you should use anti-seize in their directions. They say the newer plugs, in the past 10 years, have a corrosion resistant coating already applied on the threads from the factory.

I would have like to get his opinion on cleaning plugs using a propane or mag gas torch to burn carbon from the plug. It was a trick shown to me years ago while I was trying to keep a rich running BSA victor on the road.

How about Pulstar plugs?

Cleaning plugs is really old technique. Just replace them. Cheap and effective.

Glad I've been doing it right all these years. Thanks to my old high school auto shop teacher. I clean my spark plug electrodes with a small metal fingernail file and then gap them. I have brought cars back from the dead this way. Great video!.

Since the advent of spark plugs, mechanics have used spark plugs sand blasters and it works great. Then again, back in the '60's and '70's, spark plugs were cheap. The only reason I used the blaster was because I ran nitrous and could use the plugs longer.

I use the same thing

Jay almost seem bored to tears in this video lol

It is recommended by Loctite themselves!! If you are that worried just buy the metal free version. Anti Seize on Spark Plus threads is a good idea IMO :)

its fun to play with mechanic

And his comment about using resistor plugs in non resistor engines. I like how Jay called him out... You can run resistor plugs. It takes approximately 10,000 volts to make a resistor sparkplug spark. Most all magnetos produce over 30,000 volts.

ok go ahead, don't let the door hit you on the way out. Listen kid, when you have someone with plenty of experience who takes the time to teach you something, you should feel thankful and i hope you would reciprocate with something you can do well. So if you ever see your old kinder garden teachers or grade school teachers, thank them for teaching you to read and write today. This skinned knuckles guy knows his stuff, i bet he was working on cars when you were still in diapers .

If I was a cop I would give Jay a breathalyzer test on the spot! =)

The wire feeler gauges were for when some cars had positive ground systems. The outer electrode eroded so there was a half round wear and a flat gauge gave a false reading Negative ground fixed it.Hal

I've never ever torqued a plug. If it has a crush washer I ratchet it a half turn from hand tight. Always done the job for me. :)

NSK has a chart for plugs? Did he mean NGK? At 1:08

Does anyone have knowledge or pictures of g pray's rubber cars

the nice thing about old cars is there is no hassle in getting them out. with my car I could climb in with the engine to work on it.

nice scott two stroke in the background.

Question, has anyone ever heard any positive feedback on those E3 plugs. I haven't. just curious . They cost over 8 dollars each.

there is the Tonight Show official youtube channel, you can watch bits of Jay there

if you torque it to the correct setting, usually around 14 foot pounds, there's no risk of breaking the plug, a correct toque setting will only turn the plug a further 1/4 to 1/2 turn from finger tight.

Jay looks like he's fighting to stay awake...lol

so are diner plates, what's your point ?

" Could have gasoline coming up past the rings" lmao this guy

My '97 Geo Metro 3-cyl. was getting 41 mpg on copper plugs. Changed to Bosch Platinum+4 and over the next 10,000 miles my economy went up 14%. I thought it was all hype but since it only took 3 plugs I tried it. I figure I got my $24 back.

What car do you like would be a good start i don t buy a car because my friend tell me its good i buy it because i like it. for classic cars i would start buy looking the decades i like the 60s are probably the most popular i like the 50s all the way up to the early 70s. the brands of cars you like the design is it easy to find parts and so on. good luck

"instead of being wasteful" Time is the world's most valuable resource.

I'm pretty sure you can go to autozone and pick up a plug for either of those.

For everyone commenting on just replacing the plug for $2, a lot of this has to do with older cars where you may not be able to get plugs readily. And some older cars also use plugs that are made to be taken apart, cleaned and reused instead of replaced. I know my friend's '31 model A is that way.

It's for old cars with oddball size spark plugs, not a newer car. For example, we have an old 1926 Nash that has spark plugs that we haven't been able to find new because of the size.

nice.. I blasted the plugs then watched this. geez

I have used copper anti-seize on all plugs for 25+ years without a problem.

I have heard people say that anti seize was bad because it demands less torque so people over torque them. I always use anti seize. I use anti seize on everything including wheel nuts which some people say is crazy. I say, it is anti seize, not lubricant. I never had a problem with it.

Well, some plugs are like $10 a plug or more. Mine cost $6 and I need 8 of them. Some engines don't have new replacements available (few and far between). I could see having 2 sets and just clean one set while running another. But I tend to just buy another set because it'll still work better than just cleaning it.

I use the flat feeler gauges to gap my plugs. I always ensure the central and lateral electrodes are filed flat before I gap them...so the wire feeler gauge is not such a good idea in my mind because you can't always keep it flat. Where as the flat feeler gauge you can hold it up to the light to check if it's being held flat against the electrodes to get an accurate gap. Too much wriggle room with the wire gauges in my opinion.

I don't want to argue anymore.. If you're pretty sure, then yes. You're right. They are. everybody happy. :)

alot of older plugs are not being remade. but if its newer its not a terrible idea to clean and reuse.

that man reminds me of an older jay leno

yyyaaaa im gona buy 4 new ones for my car :P

I caught that too. LOL

On old cars you had to mess with spark plugs all the time. I've cleaned them more than once in a motel parking lot on a long trip. Nowadays with electronic ignitions and modern spark plugs you can get 100k on a set. Buying good quality spark plugs today is more important than in the old days. Sometimes they can cost $5-$6 a piece.

i'm confused, aren't plugs cheap enough nowadays to buy replacements rather than clean them? what's the benefit of cleaning them aside from saving some cash?

I don't anti-seize on aluminum heads. It throws off the reading from the torque wrench.

Modern plugs come with a zinc coating on the threads so that they do not seize onto the Al block. Dont use anti-seize, throw off your torque reading and is not necessary anymore for modern plugs. Use the smallest number of prongs you can, four prongs are more likely to break off and damage the piston and cylinder. Four vs one prong isnt going to give you any more than 1 HP if you're lucky, just more failure points.

Platinum and Iridium plugs deliver a stronger spark because they have less resistance, less resistance means more voltage for the spark, more voltage equals more heat. stronger sparks are stronger because they have more voltage, the reason a stronger spark works better is because it's hotter, it's the heat that ignites the fuel

replace only

It's funny watching jay actually let someone else talk for once

Cleaning plugs is not necessary. They are cheap enough to just replace them. Some companies are reproducing some plugs that are hard to find in some special applications or for originality sake. There is companies out there who make adapters to run more modern plugs in older cars.

So, if you were the owner of let's say: a Bugatti type 49 or a Cord or Ford Model A, you would just go online or the local shop and get them of the shelf? That's interesting? :P

In my opinion, If you can't reuse a plug, either it is worn out or you have no need to own a tool box much less a car. Any one that relies on NEW will continue to NEED new. The great problem with modern PROGRESS is that folks are convinced that the NEW is best. LOL Meanwhile we have Millions of fixable cars scrapped each year for NEWER ones. A complete waste as far as I am concerned. The energy & $ to attain raw materials for the manufacturing of new vs fix old is easily four times as much.

Why are people cleaning $1.50 spark plugs? It's like taking out a timing belt then putting it back into the car. If you are going to do the work of removing them, you might as well put new ones in.

we poor people have nothing to do , so take out the plugs & put em back in different holes,

No doubt, I enjoy working on my cars, however I wouldn't spend 10+mins per plug cleaning (with possible internal plug damage) when i'd rather than 20mins changing all of them. I save the hearth by recycling all parts i've changed and not using ant-lag when it's not needed.

In the next episode of 'Car Maintenance For Tight Asses' - How to clean and re-use your old engine oil

If my plugs looked that bad, I'd replace them. NGK Laser Platinum take a long time to look bad, they never look that bad and I still replace them every 60000 to 70000 miles. Although if they look OK they can go 100,000 miles. They really are the best for longevity because there is a platinum center electrode and a dot of platinum on the ground electrode. Single platinum isn't as long lived because they don't have the dot of platinum on the ground electrode and I actually had a chunk of ground electrode break off on one of those. Probably any brand of double platinum is a good way to go. And I have gaped laser iridium plugs, you just have to be careful.

Right...Right