Tune Up

The 100,000 Mile Tune-up

Many car manufactures are recommending that you go 100,000 miles under ideal conditions between tune ups.
Under ideal conditions (which usually means no town driving, no stop and go driving, no high speed driving and temperatures between  40 and 60 degrees F) a set of Platinum/Iridium spark plugs can easily make it to 100,000 miles.

The problem; as the spark plug electrodes wear, voltage demands to create a spark keep increasing, leading to burned-out modules, coils, spark plug wires and other ignition components. Poor spark plug performance can also cause poor engine performance, mileage loss and hard starts. We see quite a few cars drive or towed in with these problems between 80,000 and 100,000 miles.

Often forgotten are the fuel and air filters which still have to filter the same dirt out of the gasoline and air to prevent expensive repairs to the fuel injection system and engine.

Today’s computers are able to hide many problems that would cause an older car to have a serious performance problem, but if those problems aren’t detected before they multiply or worsen a highway breakdown may be imminent.

The 100,000 mile tune up may be a great selling tool for the manufactures for now, but it leads to a lot of dissatisfaction down the road when owners discover their car won’t make the 100,000 miles without a few bumps in the road.

We (and most manufactures) recommend spark plug replacement at 30,000 miles with normal spark plugs and at 50,000 to 60,000 miles on Platinum plugs and 80,000 miles on Iridium plugs. Performance and mileage degradation usually starts shortly after 30,000 miles on normal spark plugs and after 50,000 miles on platinum spark plugs.

New spark Plug	Worn Plug	Fuel-fouled plug
Examples of non-Platinum Spark Plugs