I get no end of grief from my friends and family over my 1999 Dodge Ram 2500 ST. It's a basic 3/4 ton 4x4 with a 8' bed and a 5 speed. It has 265K+ miles on it and it ain't pretty. It's a work truck that I use to haul car stuff and trailer my cars to shows. It smokes and skips and burns more oil that a cruise ship, but it has NEVER let me down and everyone wants to "borrow" it when their trucks break down or they need to tow their heavy stuff.

I do have plans to replace the motor in the spring, but I decided that I would at least do the plenum gasket, plugs, wires, cap and rotor and change the oil and antifreeze to show it some love before subjecting it to another New England winter. The plenum came off without too much trouble and, as expected, it was filled with oil, the gasket having failed in several places. Before we put the repaired plenum back in, we changed out the distributor and rotor and both showed significant signs of wear. We were a little surprised that these hadn't affected the performance more.

The real surprise came when we pulled the spark plugs! We expected that the #8 plugs would be fouled, but never in our wildest dreams were prepared for what we saw...




7 of 8 plugs. The 8th was so covered in oil that we threw that away.





Hhmmmm. Think we can clean, regap and reuse these???

I have been working with cars since college and never have I run across a set of plugs like these. One or two in a car, but not all 8.

I have a new respect for my Dodge Ram. It ran day in and day out with these plugs in it and never gave up or hinted at the trouble they were having. This is indeed One Tough Truck.

So all you guys out there that laugh at my Gen 2 Dodge and turn your nose up at its smoke and noises, you can keep your fancy new "eco" trucks with your 4 doors, leather interiors and aluminium construction. (not to mention the five figure price tags). I'll keep my good ol' Dodge pick up, Thank You!

 

[QUOTE=LeLimoMan;3273580]

It ran day in and day out with these plugs in it and never gave up or hinted at the trouble they were having. QUOTE]


I like the rams also, but, Im having a hard time believing this statement..

 

X2 ^^ Those plugs look like they were not firing. The one with the broken electrodes could not fire. Maybe that's why you had so much smoke and noise....lol

 

I know what you mean and had a hard time believing it myself, but it always started up without any trouble and besides a decided skip at speed or under load, the truck did OK. I'm not saying that it didn't have issues, but I can't believe how well it was running given the sorry state of the plugs, plenum and the cap and rotor.

 

Well there's your problem. You're using Bosch plugs lol. Put some copper core NGKs or Champs in it and ittl run like a scalded dog!

 

I would honestly bite the bullet and pull that engine for a complete rebuild.

As others have said, that engine should be running copper core plugs and not those 4-electrode platinum spark plugs (let alone any other platinum spark plug).

 

I used champion then went to autolites and been using them ever since. There was a post about the E3 plugs on another forum with similar results. I think it's the design, It just doesn't work! Pic i found on the net of E3's.



Don't know how many of you ever seen aircraft plugs but check this out! I want to see if they make one that fits our trucks.

 

Thanks for the advise. I have an engine with just 60K on it that I am going to do a light rebuild on this winter and swap it out next spring.

I did not put those platinum quad plugs in, as I am not fan of them myself. I did put NGKs in for the replacements. Truck is running pretty good today, although I'm losing idle occasionally when stopped. Given all the gunk that was in the intake, I'm gonna run a can or two of Seafoam through it.

 

Pull the throttle body, and clean it first, pay careful attention to the IAC bore... I bet it looks just as bad as your plugs.

 

Surface Discharge plugs get pretty good spark.
But these engines just seem happiest the a good copper core plug.