how hard is it to take off the manifold to get to those passenger side plugs?

think there was images in another spark plug thread, but they are gone (as they usually are when people use photobucket :p)

You mean the plenum. If I remember correctly Club frontier has a write up with pics. I just said the heck with all that and did not remove the plenum to replace the plugs in the passenger side as I indicated in this post.

twinblown wrote:Even if somehow the spark plug O-ring was bad there can not be oil shooting back from the cylinder into the cavity; seems like either some oil was left in there from the factory or your second guess: a pinched or poor seal of the rocker gasket around that plug cavity. Anyone have a pic. of the inside of a rocker cover?

How common is this problem? I checked my oil yesterday and it was down about 1/4 on the dipstick (it was full last time I checked). Poking around under the hood tonight I noticed oil in the spark plug cavity in the plug on the front driver's side. I pulled the coil pack and checked the plug tightness and it's not loose (it's so tight I can't budge it, a little concerned about that for when I have to change them). Anyway, it's still under the 5yr/60k powertrain warranty so I'm thinking about taking it in to the dealer to handle it. Any thoughts?

NoCode wrote:

twinblown wrote:Even if somehow the spark plug O-ring was bad there can not be oil shooting back from the cylinder into the cavity; seems like either some oil was left in there from the factory or your second guess: a pinched or poor seal of the rocker gasket around that plug cavity. Anyone have a pic. of the inside of a rocker cover?

How common is this problem? I checked my oil yesterday and it was down about 1/4 on the dipstick (it was full last time I checked). Poking around under the hood tonight I noticed oil in the spark plug cavity in the plug on the front driver's side. I pulled the coil pack and checked the plug tightness and it's not loose (it's so tight I can't budge it, a little concerned about that for when I have to change them). Anyway, it's still under the 5yr/60k powertrain warranty so I'm thinking about taking it in to the dealer to handle it. Any thoughts?

back it goes! get the warranty work done while you can. However, be warned that oil leaks are not always necessarily covered by warranty. They should, however, be covered by good will.

t

thanks for the reply. i have an appt to take it to the dealer this week.

follow up question for you guys - how tight are these plugs typically from the factory? at 33k mi, they obviously are original, but when i was looking at this issue last night, i was going to pull a plug and just check it out and it was so tight i couldn't budge it.

do you typically need a breaker bar to break them loose from the factory? i want to pull them all and antisieze them. i'm dealing with an issue now where 2 of the 4 on my accord i can't get out, don't want the same issue with my pathfinder. thanks.

NoCode wrote:how tight are these plugs typically from the factory?

I believe the spec is 18 foot pounds; you should not need a breaker bar, i didn't and all came loose with moderate force

Good info. The wife's Pathy just hit 100k last month. New plugs are on the agenda as well as finding the HUGE vacuum leak I hear!

daxnizmo wrote:Good info. The wife's Pathy just hit 100k last month. New plugs are on the agenda as well as finding the HUGE vacuum leak I hear!

What does the vacuum leak sound like?

I hear a big sucking noise when I hit the gas at idle, but never attributed that to a leak. Kinda scary, as any leak would be post-filter, meaning unfiltered air is getting into the engine... not good!

I plan to do my plugs sometime over the next 6 months, and will be doing a compression test at the same time. I have the tester, so I might as well give it a whirl.

t

gonna do my plugs today if its not too cold out. Its about -10C out, but my garage warms up pretty good with a couple halogen lights plugged in.

I got the plugs from my Partsource. NGK Platinum. As far as I know, these are the factory plugs. Can anyone confirm?

I'd normally buy OE, but they weren't open today...

t

I changed my plugs last night (got the plugs from Advance Auto, their part number 6240, same numbers on them as the ones I took out of the truck). I'm at 89,000 miles on the truck.

I did not remove any of the intake parts or brackets. I actually tried to take off the bracket, but couldn't get one of the bottom bolts to break loose in that tight space, so I just put the others back in and did it with the bracket on.

It wasn't that bad.

Of course I did have to separate coil pack/boot to get it out, but it went back together easily enough.

I'm not much of a mechanic, but the way I did it was:

Drive's side, took about 2-4min per plug to change, used a 10" extension (could have used shorter, but this made it super easy) with a universal joint on it and 10MM socket to take off each bolt holding the coils in. Then a 5/8" sized, 6" magnetic swivel spark plug wrench (MUCH better than my old one, Advance Auto Parts part number 80546) on the end of a 6" extension. This was VERY easy.

On the passenger's side I used the same tools, with the exception of a box-end 10MM wrench as I didn't have enough clearance on two of the bolts to get the socket in there. For the front two plugs, I did have to take the 6" magnetic swivel spark plug wrench off of the wrench and drop it down into the hole, and then put the extension on partially (just enough to get it to bite and turn) as there wasn't quite enough flex/swivel for the full deal to get straight into the hole. I think I would have had a hard time with a normal (not flexible) spark plug wrench, as it wasn't a straight shot into the hole. As stated above, I did also have yank the coil apart to get it out on the front passenger's side.

I'd say the rear plug on the passenger's side took me about 10 min (took a little while for me to get the coil back in the hole, not a lot of clearance there)

Center passenger's side was about 5 min.

Front passenger's side...probably 45, but if I had to do it again I could do it in 15, I was a little slow to pull the coil apart and spent some time trying to get it out in one piece...next time I wouldn't.

cool. thx amr40509. i'm going to tackle this soon too. my wife's path has 110k miles on em!