[Edward Dawes]

I am a new owner , have a 2000 in silver - 145k , very nice shape, all documents since new. It had " A " - plugs at a Honda dealer in Auburn, Wa at around 60k, so I decided to replace them. Did not know anything about the " A " / " B " / " C " - or indexing , so got the first attempt at O Reillys. Then discovered the ABCs of these and got a set of " A " plugs because that what Honda had installed prior to my ownership. I was 2 plugs into the swap and noticed the head is stamped " B "... Honda did an incorrect installation... My question is - should I just get the B plugs sooner than later and swap them finally for 100% correct? Any idea how much diff it makes? The car had a irritating stutter when I first got it, I cleaned the egr plate and the hole from the valve, which helped a lot, but it still has a tiny stutter. Not sure what else the stutter could be ... Thank you all ...

 

[eq1]

^ That's a tough one. If you can return the A plugs I'd definitely do the swap. If not? I don't know, I think I'd probably buy some 'indexing' washers and make the A plugs 'clock' like the B ones.

The B heads need to have the closed side of the grounding electrode at about 9-10 o'clock as seen from the front of the engine, when you're bending over the spark plugs. So that would put the open side, the 'gap side', at about 3-4 o'clock. I tried to find the right image, but couldn't,* there's a bunch around here and it just gets confusing when you start pouring over them all.

I've never really had plugs that didn't clock correctly - I did, but that was when I first bought the car and there were a lot of other issues, so I couldn't isolate the impact of switching to correctly clocked plugs. My first set of correctly clocked plugs, though, weren't the OEM ones. They were close, but not exact (they had a longer reach). When I switched from those to OEM, I noticed a slight, not insignificant difference, mainly with entry into and exit out of lean burn. It was smoother...

Not sure how much difference clocked vs. non-clocked (OEM indexed vs. non-indexed) makes. In general, I'd guess it makes a big enough difference to be worth getting them, plus, any other plugs likely won't be the 'laser iridium' that are supposed to last for 100k miles, so any other plug will also deteriorate faster and performance will suffer, however small, over that time period...

* Here's one I posted a long time ago. The red dots correspond to the closed side of the grounding electrode, as viewed from the front side of the engine (bending over the engine, as if you were installing the plugs), at about 9-10 o'clock.

 

[Edward Dawes]

^ That's a tough one. If you can return the A plugs I'd definitely do the swap. If not? I don't know, I think I'd probably buy some 'indexing' washers and make the A plugs 'clock' like the B ones.

The B heads need to have the closed side of the grounding electrode at about 9-10 o'clock as seen from the front of the engine, when you're bending over the spark plugs. So that would put the open side, the 'gap side', at about 3-4 o'clock. I tried to find the right image, but couldn't,* there's a bunch around here and it just gets confusing when you start pouring over them all.

I've never really had plugs that didn't clock correctly - I did, but that was when I first bought the car and there were a lot of other issues, so I couldn't isolate the impact of switching to correctly clocked plugs. My first set of correctly clocked plugs, though, weren't the OEM ones. They were close, but not exact (they had a longer reach). When I switched from those to OEM, I noticed a slight, not insignificant difference, mainly with entry into and exit out of lean burn. It was smoother...

Not sure how much difference clocked vs. non-clocked (OEM indexed vs. non-indexed) makes. In general, I'd guess it makes a big enough difference to be worth getting them, plus, any other plugs likely won't be the 'laser iridium' that are supposed to last for 100k miles, so any other plug will also deteriorate faster and performance will suffer, however small, over that time period...

* Here's one I posted a long time ago. The red dots correspond to the closed side of the grounding electrode, as viewed from the front side of the engine (bending over the engine, as if you were installing the plugs), at about 9-10 o'clock.

View attachment 88420

Excellent.... thank you so much. I will re check mine and set them to how you describe if I at all can ( without leaving loose or cranking too tight ) ... I can make a mark on the socket easily to do that... Thanks again...

 

[eq1]

^ Can't you exchange them for Bs? I'd try that first, if at all possible...

 

[Edward Dawes]

^ Can't you exchange them for Bs? I'd try that first, if at all possible...

I already had two of the three in and had tossed the O Reilly plugs... I figure I will run them a short time , get the B plugs and then offer them up free gratis here to someone who can use them..... This whole spark plug thing has been an interesting learning curve...