Changing Spark Plugs in your Car Truck SUV Check These Things Too

So you're gonna replace the spark plugs in your engine? Let's go over some of things that you may wanna replace while doing that job.

Here we have a 3.6-liter GMC Acadia engine and the spark plugs are located right here underneath these coils. From the back side of the engine, you can actually access the coils and the plugs pretty easily. You can get to those. But when you're doing the job, it's not gonna be out of the vehicle like this one is. You're gonna have all this stuff in your way. And then if you go to the front side, you have the coils right here. And if you look at this coil, if we try to pull this one out, you're not gonna be able to access it. As you can see, you can't even pull this coil out. Even if you remove this purged solenoid, it's not gonna fit. So either way, whether you're doing the back ones or the front ones, you're gonna have to pull this intake off. And a lot of times, people go to get their plugs changed, or go to replace them, and they forget about the intake gasket. When you pull this intake off, it has a rubber seal in between this top plenum and the lower part of the intake, and that needs to be replaced if it's ever separated.

Most of the intake gaskets are like this. They're a rubber seal, and, over time, as the gaskets are in the engine for a while, they're gonna collapse a little bit. And if they're in the engine and they're not disturbed, they're probably gonna be okay. There's not really gonna be any problem with them. But if you remove the intake and disrupt the seal at all, when you go to put it back on, it may cause a vacuum leak. You may end up with a drivability issue where you think that you just put bad spark plugs in when really, you've disrupted the intake and potentially caused a check engine light.

So if you look at an engine like this, this vehicle's a V8, the intake's in the middle and it's out of the way of the coils and the plugs. But you wanna doublecheck you have wires on this engine. And if you're doing plugs, it's always a good idea to do the wires too because they're probably brittle, and when you go to take the wires off, normally they break.

So some vehicles have a cover over the coil packs. Can take that cover off, and there's a coil pack assembly right here. Now certain vehicles have boots on those and they're replaceable. So when you take this up, sometimes those boots rip. You're gonna wanna replace those.
Now if you have an older vehicle that actually has a distributor cap, what you're gonna wanna do is replace that cap and rotor because if you're replacing spark plugs, these pretty much wear out just as fast as spark plugs do. There's contacts on the inside and they corrode and just get worn and this is spinning on the inside of there. Not only is it a good idea to do the wires, but doing your cap and rotor is definitely a great idea.

And one more thing. If you pull the coil out and you see that the boot is ripped or there's anything that's melted on the coil, it's gonna need to be replaced. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you have, make sure you subscribe to our channel. Ring the bell, turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our videos.

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