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I purchased a 2002 3.8L 'Bird for my Daughters 16th birthday.
While putting in new plugs, I noticed some of them had awful deposits. When I got to the #1,3,5 side, as soon as I pulled the wires, I noticed that a couple of them had chafed through and were arcing to the black bracket that the plug wire holder is attached to ( drivers side ).
I pulled a little slack to try and keep the wires off the bracket, but they kept moving back and touching, so I got a 3 inch piece of high temp wire loom, punched a hole in it, removed the wire holder and put the piece of loom open end away from the manifold, put the wire holder mount plug through the hole in the loom to keep it still, and pushed it back into the bracket.
I'd noticed one plug on the other side that had terrible deposits - stuff actually hanging off the gap part, so I looked at those wires, and two of them were chafed from rubbing on top of the intake manifold. I wrapped them with high temp wire loom from the wire holder on top of the manifold to the alternator.
There I found a BIG potential problem - the positive wire from the alternator had been rubbing on the aluminum mount bracket right behind the alternator. If that rubbed all the way through, it would be instant BAD news. I wrapped it with smaller loom and tie strapped it right where it had been rubbing.
Just wanted to let other owners know to check those things. She runs MUCH better now. I thought it was just plugs or bad gas. The arcing spark plug wires hadn't been firing those plugs , and that's why they had those wierd deposits.
Later all,
Jim
While putting in new plugs, I noticed some of them had awful deposits. When I got to the #1,3,5 side, as soon as I pulled the wires, I noticed that a couple of them had chafed through and were arcing to the black bracket that the plug wire holder is attached to ( drivers side ).
I pulled a little slack to try and keep the wires off the bracket, but they kept moving back and touching, so I got a 3 inch piece of high temp wire loom, punched a hole in it, removed the wire holder and put the piece of loom open end away from the manifold, put the wire holder mount plug through the hole in the loom to keep it still, and pushed it back into the bracket.
I'd noticed one plug on the other side that had terrible deposits - stuff actually hanging off the gap part, so I looked at those wires, and two of them were chafed from rubbing on top of the intake manifold. I wrapped them with high temp wire loom from the wire holder on top of the manifold to the alternator.
There I found a BIG potential problem - the positive wire from the alternator had been rubbing on the aluminum mount bracket right behind the alternator. If that rubbed all the way through, it would be instant BAD news. I wrapped it with smaller loom and tie strapped it right where it had been rubbing.
Just wanted to let other owners know to check those things. She runs MUCH better now. I thought it was just plugs or bad gas. The arcing spark plug wires hadn't been firing those plugs , and that's why they had those wierd deposits.
Later all,
Jim
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