I received a set of Iridiums from the UK for Little Miss STealthy a few weeks ago and decided to put them in today….
The original OEMs were replaced at 24,000km when I had it serviced with standard NGKs – so these have about 22,000km on them. She’s been taking a while to wake up in the morning of late – still starting, but just running a little rough for the first 30 seconds or so. I also noticed that a quick blip of the throttle would often create a little back-fire.
So, wifey is out, kids are out, dogs are asleep, and there’s nothing on the telly…
I initially assumed it would be easy – just take off the small access panels and bingo-bango. Nope. Not that easy – one plug lead on each side is difficult to clear the faring. Back to OzSToc and ST-Owners to browse. I then returned, removed one bolt holding the faring each side immediately above the panels, then a little twisting, pressure on the plastic, and out they came.
Here are what the old plugs looked like, numbered 4 down to 1 from left to right, with a new Iridium on the end:
If you look closely, you can see a little “dag” on the tip of #3, along with some significant discolouration of the ceramic stem – I assume that might have been causing the sluggishness on startup. She’s a beaut now though.
The new plugs are meant to be good for > 100,000 km too.