Aviation Spark plug Maintenance
I'm gonna show you today how to properly clean, test, and gap aviation spark plugs.
First thing we need to talk about is personal protective equipment.
We're gonna wear gloves, keeps solvent off from my hands and safety glasses.
Make sure to get nothing in my eyes.
Once you remove the plugs from the engine, you wanna keep them index and some kind of carrier, so you can tell which plug came out of which cylinder top and bottom. The reason that it is we will rotate plugs, we will put them back in as per manufactures recommendations to extend life of plugs.
We're gonna remove the old crush gasket from the plug, we will replace it with the new one right here.
deposit form in the,,down inside the plug from lead, fuel, another contaminants. Several ways we can get out of there. we got dental pick, you can get down in here, scratch around get the deposits out the way,
I'd like to use the electric engraver with little tool on it that you can buy from aircraft suppliers.
It digs down around in there. this sludge is all the lead and contaminants so you can get that out
You can see from the stuffs comes out there is always some lead, or other contaminants down in there.
Next thing we gonna do is wash the plug in a solvent to remove a.. oil, grease anything thats on old plugs anticease lubricant or anything on the top of the plugs .
so we blusted by bluster it doesn't immediate sand doesnt stick plug and we give the little shop air to get the solvent out there.
now our tester is overhere it gets sand bluster built into it and plug tester.
we insert plug in it not only does sand blust plug but rotate the plug as brusting so that is reaching all areas of top of the plug. once goes aroung one that's usually enough.
we now hit the air botton just blows the sand off the top of teh plug. again once aroung is about enough on that, remove it from the bluster, see how nice and clean plug looks compare to when i.. we took out from the engine now we screw into the tester portion and this is the pressure vessel that stimulates pressure builds up in the cylinder when plug fires. this is the high voltage lead goes in there. when hit the tester, and acturally put the power to the plug you can see the tip of the plug down here, with the mirror, it shoots up from bottom of the plug .
increase the pressure and it stimulate the pressure that you get inside the cylinder what you should see is nice, blue spark from the both sides of ground to the center electrode.
once you done that, now we gonna gap theplug check the gap on it
this is the massive electorde. so our spark plug tester has 18/1000 and 22/1000 feeler gage18 should go easily between ground and center electrode, and 22 should stop as this one does
and basically go-no go gage 18 goes through but 22 does not go through and that shows the gap is good on our plug.
now we gonna put a new crash gasket on plug and this is a copper gasket that when you put it in put plug into the cylinder and tighten it down and actually crashs gives you a good sealer betwenn the plug and cylindeer, so you dont have gasses escaping there litter antin cease lubricant on the thread
we ready to go back in engine recomend torque 25 foot pounds as per the manufacutere manual
htats how you clean and test you plugs