Check these out. I dont really know if the car is running normal. Please post.

 

They look alright to me... "normally" worn spark plugs should be a darkish grey / light brown color, should be dry (not oil fouled), and not have excessive carbon build-up on the tip. I don't see any of that on your plugs. Looks good!

 

How many miles are on those plugs?

 

Cool. So if they look black, thats running rich? and brownish is good. White is bad?

These plugs may have like 4,000 miles on them. they are the copper BPR8ES.

 

Well there is your problem. You are only running 4 spark plugs!


Oh wait...

 

A teeny bit of MMT in the gas around there?

 

kind of hard to see the burn band in those pics but it looks to be a little high on the ground strap (maybe a little rich). You can search "reading spark plugs" on google for some more info on what your looking at.

 

my only question is bro why are you running coppers or did i hear you incorrectly shouldnt you be running iridium in an evo?

 

he has a evo 8 and ngk makes a copper replacement for the evo 8 iridium. as for the evo 9 you have to run the iridium because noone has come out with a copper replacement.

 

Still making almost 100more HP than ur 8 spark plug beast

 

looks like running that MTBE octane booster crap,what does the 02 sensor look like

 

You cannot effectively analyze spark plugs that are that old. The proper way to do it is to run brand new plugs, make a pass and shut down immediately. Then analyze them with a magnifying glass.

 

It's MMT, not MTBE. Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether doesn't turn the plugs orange AFAIK.

Methylcyclopentadienyl Manganese Tricarbonyl, on the other hand ...

... manganese oxide is a brown pigment. It's logical that trace amounts would turn the white ceramic insulators an orange-ish brown.

 

plugs look fine. but tells you nothing about wide open throttle mixture. like TTP stated you have to shut car off and coast to stop on a fresh plug. Then you inspect the porcelain base deep in the plug. cant be seen with naked eye, you have to use spark plug loupe. if you want everyone to be able to see in a picture you have to cut thread off and expose the porcelain

 

I wouldn't say that's the only way to read plugs, but I agree that it's the best.

You can still generally detect moderate detonation, less than that which breaks the pistons, by observing small metal specs on the ceramic, melted and knocked off the piston or cylinder head and deposited there. I've observed that on many engines before.

You can also tell if an engine is running dramatically too rich, or if the plugs are dramatically too hot or cold. Also something I've observed and used to tune jets in old carburated V8's. (later confirming after installing an O2 sensor) But it's not THAT useful, and only tells you if there's something very wrong- something so wrong that an engine as stressed as an Evo's would already be having severe problems before ever reaching that level of mal-tuning.

Fine, useful, adjustments are where you'd need to look deep down on the ceramic face and/or cut the threads to take a picture.

I suppose all that isn't too useful to you, but I just mentioned it for argument's sake. In other applications, you can still use the plugs as a very, very, rough gauge of how the engine is running. And, if you see specs of metal on the ceramic in ANY engine, you probably ought to be very concerned about knock and/or pre-ignition.

-Adrian