Well I bought some autolite platinum spark plugs and a plenum gasket yesterday and decided to change my plugs today. On my 3.4 you have to take the plenum off completely to get to the plugs. Well I got my plugs and gapped them to the .060in recommendation on the emissions sticker. I took the car to our garage at our other house,let it cooldown, and started work at about 10:00.I tore into the engine and replaced the plugs. The old ones came out no problem and all the bolts came out easy to. The stock intake gasket looked good, even better and of a higherquality than the new one I bought, soI left the old one in.I thought everything was going great. I put it all back together and fired it up. It ran like crap and then the CEL started flashing. Well I only replaced the plugs, so I figured I either had a problem with them or I hooked the wires up wrong (which was highly unlikely because they were numbered). Well I tore into it again and got the plugs back out. I checked the gaps and tightened them up a bit to about .055 just to be sure. I checked the plenum gasket again just to be sure, and it was fine. I put it all back together again. When I fired it up for the second time, I got the same result and shut it back down. So now I figured something must really be ****ed up. I tore back into it for the third time. I checked everything as I went and it all seemed to be right. So I got the plugs back out and I gapped them to .045 to be sure it wasnt the gap that was giving me problems. I cleaned everything up, checked all the electrical plugs, vacuum lines, ect. and made sure I put it all back together 100% correct, even though I know it was fine the first two times I did it. Well I fire it up again and it runs like a dream. No problems at all. It was the gap all this time. Both the computer at advance auto and my emmissions sticker said the gap should be .060. Even the old plugs were gapped at .060. So I rapped it all up at about 2:45. I had to run home and get ready for a super bowl party. So it took me a total of 4 3/4 hours to change a set of plugs. At least now I know I can get it all apart easilynext time they need replaced. Oh and I put a piece of tape on the rad support that says gap= .045 and I also wrote it in the owners manual.

 

4 3/4 Hours???

It took me 3 Days.
I had no clue how to rotate the engine forward at first. The forum saved my butt there. Then I could NOT get the Plug Caps off two of the firewall side Plugs without fabricating a tool to pry those bad-boys off there. Wrecked a Boot. Got new wires. Had the fight of my life getting the wire loom guides to open for getting the old wires out and new wires in. The original Plugs on the firewall side seemed welded into the Spark Plug Holes. I had to literally climb-up onto the engine and use a 1/2" Drive Pry Bar to break loose those Plugs. Three days. A little bit at a time. The job was made easier when I got me a Ratchet Strap and hauled the Engine forward for some "Serious" working room. My friends and family thought I was going to lose it when they heard the swearing coming out of the garage. Eventually, I won the battle. Three days Labor for the first timer. But, the story ends with some new Platinum Plugs and a set of Bosch High-performance wires on the Engine instead of the stockers with 70,000 Miles on them. Next time I revisit the Plugs I dont expect to have to take much more than 2 Hours. Every fastener I had to undo and the threads of the Plugs were Never-Seized.

Now that you have your Plugs changed ...
Replace the Fuel Filter.
That's another fund day in camp!

 

so by having the plugs with teh wrong gap it causes the CEL to come on?........since i got my plugs in i had that problem ...witht eh CEL but car runns fine ..........so i toke the car in and it said it was the MAF that was fixed light went out for 2 days and came back again .........hmmmmmmm maybe ill check teh plugs.........

...i dint put them in lol

 

Yeah the wrong gap on the plugs was causing a major misfire and I think that is why the CEL was flashing. The engine was shaking pretty hard, it was vibrating the whole carreally bad. If yours isnt flashing and your car is running fine I would guess that you are pulling an intermittent misfire code.

 

Hopefully I wont have to do that for a while, but I would imagine thats no walk in the park either.

 

hehehe... 60 degree V6 engine's rule....

90-degrees droool

:-P

 

I'm going to put more money on either bad plugs or wires. They should be gapped at 0.060unless you have some forced induction mods or other serious tuning. 0.045 is for those that are running like 15 - 20 lbs of boost. As far as I can see you are NA so there is no reason to have such a short spark gap... just wasting fuel now.

I would actually double check your wires and plugs to see if there are any fouling problems coming up.