Hi Folks,

I've made some recent posts about my 1992 245 that was stalling, with a poor idle, and bogging down on acceleration. The car has been running fine after cleaning the throttle body, replacing the fuel pump fuses, and cleaining the IAC valve. The car runs fine now even at low fuel levels in the tank, but I went ahead and ordered some tune-up parts from IPD.

Got some NGK spark plugs, bosh spark plug wires with fancy metal ends covering the rubber boots, new air filter, fuel filter, cap and rotor.

The tuneup went fine except for a couple of odd problems.

1. For some reason the bosh spark plug wires wouldn't push down onto the spark plugs. The tip of the spark plug was too large to snap into the metal connection inside the boot.

To solve this I unscrewed the metal cap from the tip of the spark plugs and then they snapped in fine into the bosh plug wires. Is there any problem with me doing this? Seemed odd to me and never had to do that before.

2. Had a bear of a time replacing the fuel filter. Forgot to pinch the fuel lines and spilled a bunch of gas. Had difficulty getting the connections loose, but eventually got them. Mission accomplished and smelled like gasoline for the rest of the day.

Car is running fine with no noticeable difference after the tune up.

13

Back in the good old days when I played with air cooled Voldswagens, I often wondered why spark plug manufacturers put that threaded cap on the plugs. They were taken off and tossed in the garbage. But that is what Bosh wires expect. Other mfgs of plug wires use the larger cap, so plug suppliers put them on all plugs.
No worries, and dielectric grease is not needed. By the time the plug gets rusty on top, it will need to be replaced anyway.

Klaus
--
The more I learn, the more I forget. So why learn?

"The more I learn, the more I forget. So why learn?"

To answer that question:

So when they look at you to see if that the light is on, they will just say, "OH! He is home. He is just in the bathroom!

Phil

Dan,

The Bosch spark plug wire caps require that the large adaptor be removed from the spark plugs. They are supposed to capture the threaded end of the spark plug terminal by spring action. Yep, I normally get gas on me when I change the filter too. Welcome to the club.

Thanks guys, good to hear that I did the correct thing with the spark plugs, plus I used dielectric grease too.

Best wishes.

13

Maybe you did not need the tune-up yet? Hopefully your MPG will increase and your tune-up will pay for itself.
No problem taking off resistor caps, you should have put some di-electric grease in and on the plugs to create a waterproof corossion proof seal for the plugs and wires.