I recently did the cams on my evo, and while doing it, I noticed that my 1000 mile plugs were black with a red tint on and around the electrode. One of my friends suggested that it is burn spots from running rich.

Anyone have any ideas about it?

Ken

 

I have seen this twice, once on my EVO and on one other. Both were also fouled with horrible carbon tracks. I suspect that it was caused by contaminated gas, with what? I have no idea.
My plugs fouled out right after getting gas a some hole in the wall station in the middle of no where. TXEVO's plugs were also red like that, with carbon tracks. He was not even aware there was an ignition problem. Although he was having a hard time making power at a Dynoflash session, of course they blamed that on his UR pulley, but thats another story. He just decided to run cooler plugs and I was helping him with the install.
I inspect my plugs every 2-3K, it's a good habit. Accept for that one time I have not had that sort of red contamination again.
BTW don't bother trying to clean them, once the ceramic gets contaminated like this it just doesn't come out.
Did you notice any carbon tracks? Sometimes they are hard to see if there is a lot of contamination/carbon.

 

Only time I have seen that is when I made the mistake of running some "octane booster". All of the octane boosters you can buy at the parts store are CRAP and will leave nasty deposits on your spark plugs. Have you ever used any octane booster in your car?

Keith

 

yeah.. those red tints are from octane boosters... i got them too once when i tried some Nulon ones... crap stuff..

 

Yep...I threw in some Turbo 104 racing octane booster. No more of that crap stuff though.

Thanks for all your posts.

Ken