Grease Monkey

 

1. My parents had a ‘94 Olds 88 LSS, which had a V-6 variation of the Cadillac Northstar system. One of the things it had was a coil system similar to what you describe on your Saturn, with one coil pack per pair of cylinders. As I recall, the 88 did not have the cylinder deactivation which was famously part of Northstar, but from what I remember firing a spark every other cycle improved engine emissions by giving a chance for remaining unburned fuel to get ignited on the way out of the exhaust valve. Of course it doesn’t contribute to engine power, but it does reduce noxious emissions.

   Posted by Red Five       09/10/2013  at  05:05 PM  



2. It also increases wear on the plugs, I think. After all, they now have to fire off twice as often.

   Posted by Drew458       09/11/2013  at  10:56 AM  



3. You should be shot for never having replaced those plugs.50 k is as far as any plug,even super duper double platinum should be used as that little gap you noticed puts a big load the the coils.Poor spark also queers up the injector loads required to make efficient use of that Four dollar a gallon fuel.BTW, I am also sure your milage will go up a bit now that your getting clean spark too.
   Tsk Tsk.
   

   Posted by Rich K       09/11/2013  at  05:55 PM  



4. One more thing, Be very careful about using the cheap standard electrode plugs in these high voltage FI motors. Because of the spark energy required to make plugs last as long as yours did they require the platinum to survive the stress of that voltage( in the 100k range).  The standard electrode plugs will break down very fast and give a poor service life in these motors.Also, some engine systems will not work properly without platinum plugs,I know this as we tested the theory years ago on a few rigs we had ( trying to save money).

   Posted by Rich K       09/11/2013  at  06:02 PM  



5. The el-cheapo Autolites say they have a service life of 35K miles. These days that’s at least 2 years driving for me. At this point I wonder if the rest of the car will last that long, but even if I have to replace the $1.49 plugs with $4 plugs a year and a half from now, I think I come out ahead. I probably could have just polished up the old ones and regapped them, but I had doubts about reusing their gaskets. Worst case is I’m out $6 next Spring. I can live with that.

   Posted by Drew458       09/12/2013  at  07:41 AM  

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