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MG TD TF 1500 - Spark Plug recommendation

First the stats;
51 TD pertronix Igniter and AC Delco R45 Plugs.
Drive the car often but not aggressively.

What plugs and gap do you all suggest.

I am doing a tune up. Been 5 to 6 years since last time.

Due to total Hard Drive failure I have lost all my notes, this is like starting all over. :(
I now am keeping hard copy notes and computer.

I tried looking in the archives, but with little luck.
If someone could do a write up of how to use the Search
feature, it might help.
G D

GD,
click on ARCHIVE
enter SPARK PLUGS
click on ANY OF THESE WORDS
click on START SEARCH
this will give you a list of threads to look at,,scroll down to threads with SPARK PLUGS in the title

Hope this helps,
SPW
STEVE WINCZE

GD,
I believe that the "R" indicates a resistor plug, which is not necessary in a TD

SPW
STEVE WINCZE

Nothing to do with spark plugs - "Due to total Hard Drive failure I have lost all my notes, this is like starting all over. :("

One word - BACKUP
Follow up - do a backup of your data once a month minimum. You can do it to the cloud, to a backup service, to a CD or DVD, or a flash drive, whichever you are comfortable with, but do it religiously.

Back to the subject of spark plugs,I don't know what number to use, but unless the head on your TD engine has been swapped out to the later head, you need spark plugs with a 1/2" reach. Cheers - Dave
David DuBois

Steve,
Thanks, I just spent the last hour and a half reading the archives, which helped.



Not to make excuses about the hard drive, but the computer had/has an external backup that was suppose to be continues back up. The backup, backed up garbage.

Not all files are lost but many, and for some reason many of the lost files are mine which means I am filing items incorrectly.
G D

If you have the early head, I'd suggest the NGK BP6HS. Bud
Bud Krueger

Carbonite!

My backup hard drive although appearing to work stopped working but gave no indication. All backed up offsite now.
J E Carroll

After extensive research, I discovered O'rielly sell an older Autolite Platinum plug, 1/2" reach 14mm, for only $2.99. Cold enough for our supercharged engine and hot enough to keep the electrodes clean in all lead-free gas tankjs.
JIM NORTHRUP SR

"Not to make excuses about the hard drive, but the computer had/has an external backup that was suppose to be continues back up. The backup, backed up garbage."

We too had an external backup and found that it backed up crap as well as good information (garbage in garbage out). We finally gave up on the external backup, went to using an external hard drive for all of our data and manually do a direct copy of our data to flash drives once a month. One flash drive is kept in our safe deposit box in the bank (I am paranoid about fire) and one at home, swapping them each month. This way we are never in danger of losing more than a maximum of a months worth of data if something crashes. Cheers - Dave
David DuBois

"Not to make excuses about the hard drive, but the computer had/has an external backup that was suppose to be continues back up. The backup, backed up garbage."

Dave, Strange you mentioned that problem, as I just ordered a 500 gig hard drive and an external USB case to put it in just to back up two computers and yes I have a bunch of sticks with various bits of important info also.
Sorry GD, didn't mean to hijack your post. PJ
Paul sr

TDs before #22734 use a spark plug with a 1/2 inch reach and after that number use plugs with a 3/4 inch reach. Putting a 3/4 inch reach plug into a head meant for a 1/2 inch can damage the piston

Mine is an earlier one, it had Champion L86's, but I switched to NGK B6HS's. It has been running very nicely for the 100 miles or so since the change.

BobbyG

Bobby Galvez

"JIM NORTHRUP SR, Michigan, USA

After extensive research, I discovered O'rielly sell an older Autolite Platinum plug, 1/2" reach 14mm, for only $2.99. Cold enough for our supercharged engine and hot enough to keep the electrodes clean in all lead-free gas tanks."

Jim,
What gap do you use with those and are you running Petronix ignition? I have the Moss Supercharger.
Is this the right part number?
I noticed on Dave Brauns carburetor instructions he recommends a .030 gap with the Petronix.
Thanks,
Mort


Mort Resnicoff (50 TD-Mobius)

I called Autolite and they recommended AP425 but it's no longer in production. I ordered a set on Amazon at $3.48 each no shipping fee.
Mort Resnicoff (50 TD-Mobius)

Computer backup:

I worked in the IT field for many years, so am very familiar with this issue. One thing that has not been mentioned is the importance of regularly testing your backup strategy. This means, perhaps at the beginning of each month, restore a few random files from your backup (local device or the Internet) and make sure you can open these files. This will alert you to a potential backup problem in time to fix it.

Remember, backing up your data solves only half the problem. You have to be able to restore the data, too!

On my home network my primary data disk is configured as a RAID 0 pair. I backup all critical data to another local disk and to the Internet.

These days, this backup strategy is easily implemented and affordable. Just ask yourself how much you would be willing to pay to recover your data if it was all lost. For me, the cost of my backup strategy was far less than this.

Feel free to fire any questions you want to me offline.

Larry
Larry Shoer

I see my hummingbird brain got ahead of my eagle mouth. The Autolite plugs still available from O'rielly's for $2.99 are the AP 425. Maybe I should grab a dozen and squirrel them away.


As I recall, I'd have gapped them as in the good old days, .035". Our TD has a new coil they advertise as 60,000V, but doesn't look any different than an old Ford coil, (I even did some work in the old Ford plant where they made the coils) plus it has the same Fold looking condenser and same Ford looking ballast resistor, thus, the old Ford looking gap.

With the platinum electrode, we'd probably get away with a much wider gap. We could probably double the gap and never notice a miss.

I was surprised when first digging into Lucas electrics with the really tight points & plug gaps.
JIM NORTHRUP SR

I see my hummingbird brain got ahead of my eagle mouth. The Autolite plugs still available from O'rielly's for $2.99 are the AP 425. Maybe I should grab a dozen and squirrel them away.


As I recall, I'd have gapped them as in the good old days, .035". Our TD has a new coil they advertise as 60,000V, but doesn't look any different than an old Ford coil, (I even did some work in the old Ford plant where they made the coils) plus it has the same Fold looking condenser and same Ford looking ballast resistor, thus, the old Ford looking gap.

With the platinum electrode, we'd probably get away with a much wider gap. We could probably double the gap and never notice a miss.

I was surprised when first digging into Lucas electrics with the really tight points & plug gaps.
JIM NORTHRUP SR

The original coil in the TD's was about an 8,000 volt coil. The LA-12, SA-12, SP-12 Sport Coil are all better ratio's (in increasing order of output).
Sincerely,
Bob
Bob Jeffers

This thread was discussed between 23/04/2013 and 28/04/2013

MG TD TF 1500 index

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