Little back ground.
Motor: d16a6 block, rebuild with around 550 miles on it, with a lower mileage z6 head. Stock ignition system, ie stock z6 plugs (obviously new ngk's, but stock for a z6) brand new knechts distributor cap and rotor, stock plug wires but they give me no problems.
The ecu is a stock p28 that was converted to manual by me from an auto ecu, no codes being thrown.

I decided to change my plugs while replacing my alternator belt to see if i could get rid of the cold idle miss fire i've been having, which it did. here's what they look like:

Cylinder 1:


Cylinder 2:


Cylinder 3:


Cylinder 4:


I'm going to get it chipped with a base map on chrome from vip performance to get me by untill i can afford a full on dyno session, and i have been running nothing but 92 octane since first crank. plugs have same miles as the motor.
does everything look ok? or am i running super lean? my plugs don't really match up to any of the images in my haynes manual

 

Far from lean. You want a nice light chocolate brown color like you have for the most part. Not black or white just the nice brown. ( it's different with alcohol and some race fuels but you aren't in that category) I wouldn't worry about it at all. Do you know how to do a plug chop?

 

looks like the car has been running a bit hot, otherwise okay.


a tad dark, but then hondas run rich from the factory anyways

 

plug chop, as in remove the threaded part of the plug all the way down to the base of the electrode?

yeah it prolly has been a tiny bit hot, i love vtec... it sounds so beasty towards redline... lol

 

your plugs look perfectly fine to me, but a quick ? why are you running 92 ocatane? Are you running alot higher comp ratio's or something? I honestly dont think you need 92 and imo are just throwing a bit of money down the tubes.

 

several reasons.

first, this was my first build, and i'm being over cautious about it. i put far too much money into getting my car running, and i don't want it to blow up or melt down.

second: i'll be honest, it's not the best way, but this build was pieced together from the junk yard (all new bearings/rings/gaskets were used, crank was micro polished, block was honed, and the head was re surfaced). the head, when i bought it had (and still does have) one of those metal tabs glued onto it showing who rebuilt it and what not, or so my machine shop told me (eastco machine shop, been around for 40+ years, i trust them). I don't know if the head had been milled or resurfaced before, and by how much if it had, so once again i assume it has been atleast milled ten thousandths of an inch, which bumps compression

third: my motor does not technically exist. yes, hundreds of people have created this frankenstein, but a stock p28 is programed to properly run a z6, which is around 9:1 compression, and i'm running closer to 10:1, which is what a gsr is, and my gsr cluster says premium only, so i go by that. these numbers are based on zealautowerks compression calculator (http://www.zealautowerks.com/dseries.html). i'm still rocking the stock pm6 pistons, not the p28 pistons a z6 has.

short answer, i figured i'd better be safe than sorry untill i get a tune.