Well, today I pulled the plugs. I had 29,549 miles on the General, and it was time. I HIGHLY recommend this as a DIY project based on what others report dealers charging for this maintenance. I've heard figures of $250.00 to well over $400.00. I paid ~$25.00 for 16 OEM Champion RE14MCC4 plugs from rockauto.com.
Here are a few post mortem thoughts:
1) Unlike other cars I've worked on, the rearward plugs were easier to pull. The plugs for #1 cylinder were blocked by the oil dipstick tube, and it was necessary to pull the airbox to access the plugs for #2 (those of you with CAI's can probably avoid that step).
2) A rudimentary socket set is all that is required. You need a 5/8" spark plug socket, a U-joint, and a 4" extension, in that order.
I would have posted pics, but wife & kids were away for the weekend and took the camera with them...
The whole process took me about 2 1/2 hours, mostly because I kept having to go back into the house for more beer...
As we can see, this topic has been covered a lot and I just have one question. When we put the plugs in my brother's sprint car we do something called indexing the plugs. This is marking where the gap is and pointing the gap at the piston so you get the most spark and thus power pointed in the right direction. With these plugs dropping in from the top is there a correct direction to place them, or does it even matter that much?
As we can see, this topic has been covered a lot and I just have one question. When we put the plugs in my brother's sprint car we do something called indexing the plugs. This is marking where the gap is and pointing the gap at the piston so you get the most spark and thus power pointed in the right direction. With these plugs dropping in from the top is there a correct direction to place them, or does it even matter that much?
Some people have tried it over on LX forums... I don't remember it getting them much to make the shimming(i guess that's the only proper way to do it) of the plug worthwhile
thanks to this thread, changed plugs today in just over 2 hours. couple of helpful hints.
1. coil pack on # 7, slide the vacuum canister type up and its much easier to get your wrenches in that tight space.
2. I stuffed a towel between the coil packs and the space just above the exhaust manifold and it saved me much agony when dropping a socket...it would just lie there on top of the towel waiting to be picked up
3. do this job on a cold engine in the am.
Hi Guys, I've benefited from many threads here and just giving a little back about my spark plug change experience on my '09 ex-Police Charger...
I've owned the car about one year and had only recently had a chance to change the plugs. I suspected they'd never been changed and discovered I was right. I pulled the original plugs out with over 107,000 miles on them and the car's been running great for me this past year. Gaps on the OE plugs were on average about 0.055". They didn't look much different from other used plugs pulled from 5.7's posted on this forum (other than big gaps).
I put in Champion 9055 Iridium plugs, purchased from Rock Auto for $5.56 each.
Job took less than 90 minutes and below is a photo of the tools I used. The Mac Tools spark plug install tool does speed things up without worry of cross tread as it's just rubber, has enough grip to spin the plugs as long as there's not much friction, meaning if you're cross threading the tool will loosen on the plug.
That's a 1/4" drive speed wrench, 6" long 1/4" drive extension and u-joint all for coil pack r&r. I did need the longer lever arm of the 3/8" drive socket wrench to remove such old plugs and was nervous with each tug as it made the typical dry thread screech I was saying prayers for a clean removal (and was granted!). I did not use a u-joint for actual plug r&r, just different length extensions on the plugs close to the firewall.
You'll get dinged for wasting money on the Iridium plugs. They probably won't hurt but since you just saw your car go 107k on OEM plugs, why mess with that record?
Hmm, didn't know that they were original until pulling them, plus it seems Dodge has switched to Iridium as OE for '12. That and I barely have time for an oil change...
I'm reviving an old thread because I have a relevant question that I didn't see addressed yet in this thread or the several other good spark plug threads. I'm getting ready to change my plugs. The owner's manual says gap should be .043. The Champion Copper Re14mcc4 plugs come with gap set to .045.
My question is whether you folks are actually slightly reducing the gap out of the box to the .043 spec, or are you calling .045 close enough and installing as they come?
For 2005-2006 (at least) the recommended gap was 0.045" so no gap adjustment is needed. I would gap them to whatever is correct for your car (the emissions sticker under the hood will tell you for sure).
Was .045 your starting point? Was it a challenge? I see in your signature that you are an electrician, so you likely have some experience with something as tedious as taking .002 inches off the gap of 16 spark plugs. :yikes:
The OP mentioned removing the air box to get to some tricky plugs, is that everyone's experience or have you all been able to swap spark plugs w/o moving anything else?