Our 2002 Camaro has now done 99,000 miles, so with a trip “out East” coming up I figured it was time to change the spark plugs since they’re supposed to be changed at 100,000 miles.

Of course nothing is as easy as it used to be, and the spark plugs are buried “way down there” on the sides of the V6 engine, half back under the windscreen on the car, with the spark plug boots sticking out through the exhaust manifold enough to see them, but barely enough to grip them. I did manage to pull one off “by hand” with the loss of only a small amount of skin, but couldn’t even move the other 5.

So off to AutoZone (I had to buy the new plugs anyhow) to ask if they had a tool to pull these things off with. The only tool they had would have require removing the engine to be able to use it, at which time it wouldn’t be needed anyhow.

So, with some Kiwi Ingenuity™ I devised the Kiwi Spark Plug Boot Puller, which worked amazingly well, and allowed me to pull the remaining 5 spark plug boots off in about 5 minutes.

A shoe lace wrapped around the metal shield that is over the rubber spark plug boot, ready to pull it off.

I thought for the photos a white shoe lace might show up better, but as it turns out they're both pretty visible.

Here we see laces in the #6 and #4 cylinders

In the very close quarters down by the engine, the shoe lace allows to pull directly out, while wiggling up and down a bit to break the seal between the spark plug boot and the spark plug.

With the shoelace tightened in the groove, now you can pull directly outwards on the tube and spark plug boot, with zero strain on the actual spark plug wire. Slight wiggling up and down while pulling outwards helps to break the bond between the spark plug and the spark plug boot, allowing it to “pop” off.

The spark plug boot removed. The shoelace is firmly wrapped in a groove around the top of the metal tube.

Success!!!!

AC Delco Professional 41-101 Iridium spark plugs. The old one on right has done 99,000 miles. The tip is worn down about .010" if it was originally gapped at .060" as the new one is. Interestingly, even though on the porcelain part it says AC Delco, on the metal body it indicates made in Japan by NGK

Comparison of olde and new – the olde plug has done 99,000 miles, and the tip is clearly worn down, but not by a whole lot – about .010″

©2010 Roger’s Ramblings. All Rights Reserved.

There was spaghetti with meat sauce, salad, bread sticks and Pavlova. There was also a Bake Sale table selling a variety of cookies, cup cakes, and of course ANZAC Biscuits.

It was fairly successful – we made nearly $500 from it, so that will be a great start on the Friends Team fund raising effort for Relay for Life this year.

©2010 Roger’s Ramblings. All Rights Reserved.

Where were you 8 years ago? I remember it all very clearly because of the unusual, and as it turns out very fortuitous situation Lisa and I were in.

We had been up in the Rocky Mountains at Estes Park for the Clan Moffat Society AGM that had ended on Sunday 9 September 2001. We spent Monday 10 September driving up to the top of the Rocky Mountains above Estes Park and then back down and just out of Colorado into Denver.

I had driven out to Colorado and Lisa had flown out, with me meeting her at Denver Airport. I was to drop her off at Denver Airport early on the morning of September 11 and then set out for the 2 day drive home while she flew back. But up at Estes Park I hadn’t been so well, suffering perhaps a bit of mountain sickness, with a bad headache much of the time, so we decided Lisa would come back in the car, incase I couldn’t handle all the driving myself.

Tuesday morning I was down in the car park cleaning the car windows, talking to a biker dude from Texas who was readying his Harley for the day’s riding when Lisa came down and told me a plane had hit the World Trade Center. We went upstairs in time to see GMA show the second plane hitting live.

We spent all of that day driving 700 miles to the outskirts of Chicago, listening in stunned amazement to Public Radio from Nebraska, Iowa and Illinois all day. We endured a massive line at a petrol station and paid some artificially inflated price to refuel as everyone panicked about what the price of oil was going to be.

Got to a motel about 9 PM which was the first chance I got to see anything on TV to put pictures to what we had been listening to all day, so watched that for a couple of hours.

During the afternoon, somewhere in Iowa, with the news from NPR that President Bush who had been shuffling around the country in Air Force One was on his way from Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, which we had passed earlier in the day was on his way to Washington DC, and we saw this – unfortunately not taken quickly enough to capture the best we’d seen, or Air Force One with its F-16 fighter jet escort heading to Washington DC. They were of course by then the only planes in the air.

Air Force One 11 September 2001

My brother from Australia was not so lucky. He had been in Louisiana at a computer conference and was due to fly back to Australia 11 September. So he was stuck in the US for quite a few more days and then had a very long chaotic series of flights lasting more than a day to get across the US to Los Angeles and then on to Australia once the planes did finally start flying again.

©2010 Roger’s Ramblings. All Rights Reserved.

I hope over the next week or so to post more pictures and commentary from our trip to Bar Harbor and Mount Washington, and I’ve got the pictures from Thursday’s arthroscopic surgery on my knee scanned, but that’s as far as that got…

And I have plenty of back posts to attempt to make on genealogy and travel matters and yard and garden…

Having published 2 posts today I have to say I’m even more in awe of those who publish mulitple posts every day than I was before!!!!!

©2010 Roger’s Ramblings. All Rights Reserved.