Broken spark plug electrode

[paul.miner]

The bike ('93 Katana 600) started running pretty crappy the past couple days. It would usually start out okay, and get worse as it warmed up. This rapidly changed to where it would start running pretty rough after only a mile, to running ratty right from startup. This all happened over the past two days.

After I got home today, I took an infrared thermometer to each header. Headers 1, 3, and 4 were around 350-380 F, but #2 was at about 210 F. After the bike had cooled, I pulled the plugs, and found this in #2:



I had put Autolites in it a few weeks ago because the store was out of NGK. So today I bought some DR8ES-L (hot type) plugs, and put them in. Went out for a quick ride and it feels a lot better.

For comparison, here's the NGK and Autolite side by side. The electrode on the Autolite sticks out further:

[Rangerx52]

when i went to buy my ngk's from lordco a few days ago, they said they didnt have any in stock, but that they had the autolites. He said they were just as good as ngk. I asked how much the ngks were, he said about 10 bucks, then i asked how much the autolites were, and he said 3.

I looked at him for about 5 seconds until he finally clicked with "oh wait.. thats probably not a good thing.."

i drove to another lordco.


you paid bottom dollar for an engine component and you got bottom dollar performance. At least it didnt damage your engine, that would have sucked