More bad news--
I had to dispute the charges on my card from Pulse Plugs. Nothing has been received from them in spite of their promise last week. Their customer service is extremely bad. IF the plugs ever show up, I'll let you know.

osborne, have you had any better luck??

 

man thats some bullshit

 

That sucks, I was looking forward to reading your writeup of this product. Hopefully they actually deliver to someone on the board.

 

OK, NOW I have to call AmEx back and cancel the charge dispute.
THE PLUGS ARE FINALLY HERE. Whoopee.

I will get them installed tomorrow, drive a tank-full in normal street/hwy. traffic, and with the next tank will torture-test while making a movie of the hairiest mountain road I know in this area of CA.

I can't rave about good customer service, but MAYBE I will have something good to say about the product performance. I hope that osborne received his plugs too.

 

Here's hoping that they're worth the wait. . .

 

If they are, I will be pleasantly surprised. I am as doubtful as the rest of the posters in this thread. So far, this vendor has just boosted my level of suspicion.

 

More info and a warning---

I didn't know this before I ordered the plugs, and I should have looked it up in my Honda Fit Service Manual--

To get to your spark plugs, you have to remove the intake manifold. This is the first car I have ever owned where this is such a difficult job. Getting the manifold off is not such a big deal, but I have to go to a dealer and buy a new intake manifold gasket before I take the manifold off.

The smallest engine that the Pulstar plug maker discusses in their literature regarding benefits of the plugs is a 2004 Toyota Corolla 1.8 liter. With that car and engine, they claim that you only get 2.2% better fuel economy, 10% faster 0-60 time, and 5.0% more torque. To me, this is not enough gain to be worth the cost of parts and time to R&R the intake manifold and plugs. If you take the new plugs and your car to a mechanic, you are looking at a bill for at least $100.00 in parts and labor.

In my opinion, the cost of the plugs, short lifespan (50,000 miles) and low gains are not worth the cost. I am going to return the plugs, unused, for a refund. If I had known ahead of time how much work it takes just to replace the plugs, I would not have ordered them.

osborne, I don't know if you realized how much work and extra parts were involved when you volunteered. If you did and still want to test the plugs, then more power to you. I don't want to tear apart my new car to test such small improvements that are promised.

Sorry guys, but at least now you know what is involved with your Fits for what WAS a simple job in "the good old days". If you are going to do any modifications, my advice is to buy the Helm Fit Service Manual, and read it to find out what has to be removed and replaced in the modification that you are planning. All of the necessary R&R may make you change your mind. With suspension, intake, and exhaust mods, you just undo a few nuts & bolts and move BIG stuff around. Weird that now you have to take the top half of your engine off just to change plugs.

It's a damn good thing that most plug brands last so long.

 

OK, now forget everything I said above about needing to R&R the intake manifold. I claim "temporary insanity" (actually, diabetic low blood sugar).

The coils, coil wire harness, and plugs are all behind and under the intake manifold, and the nuts that hold down the coil wire harness are extremely hard to reach, but they can be reached and, with difficulty, removed. In looking at the coil wire harness with a fresh perspective today, I now see how it comes out.

This post comes to you courtesy of claymore, who pm'ed me about my last post politely asking, "What? Remove the intake manifold? Are you crazy? I don't have to do that!". He's right, I was full of sh!t. If I only had little Japanese hands that fit in the little spaces where the fasteners and wire clips are, things would be easier.

So, I will keep my blood sugar level up and do this again and will post more later. Still, using the plug maker's Toyota Corolla reference, I don't think that the benefits will justify the cost or the effort here, but will let you know more later.

 

woah I am a diabetic also, type 1 [offtopic/]

 

Type 1 here also- PM sent.

 

OK, plugs are now in and the engine runs fine. No test drive yet, but will post after a few miles. Thanks to a tip from claymore, some of the instructions from the service manual were unnecessary. You don't have to disconnect the wire harness from each coil. There is enough slack in the wires to allow you to pop the coils off the left three cylinders and just let them hang while you R&R the plugs. But #4 is a bastard (the far-right cylinder behind the throttle body). Honda must use a Sumo wrestler to torque down the 10 mm bolts that hold down the coils.

This is a very unpleasant job, and I don't expect to see ANY difference from these plugs other than 1/2 the expected life of standard plugs. But we'll see.

claymore, if you R&R your plugs as often as you wrote about in your DIY post, you must be bored out of your skull and have absolutely NO personal life at all!

 

hey, my post got deleted. lol

 

That's OK Josh-
You were probably accusing me of being crazy about the intake manifold, and if so, you would have been right just like claymore!

 

Manxman, sorry bro, but I have been in Vegas for the last week and have had no communication back home. I am back in Tampa now and I still have not been home, but I do know that the plugs are there waiting for me. I will take a look at everything when I get home and I still plan on getting the car dyno'd this weekend.

 

No problem osborne.
And as far as I can tell so far, there is no reason to hurry up to get them installed. No Butt Dyno effect here. Your floor dyno results may show up some otherwise undetectable effects. Strong suggestion- if you don't already have a magnetic spark plug socket, a 3/8" drive flex ratchet, a 4" extension, and a universal joint, get them because you will need them, especially the magnetic plug socket. The plug instructions strongly warn not to install any plug that has been dropped, and they will be easy to drop out of a regular plug socket.

Good luck and I hope that your dyno expense winds up showing something (anything).

 

For the benefit of fitfreak members who want to change out their own plugs, and considering the nominal expense of a magnetic spark plug socket, my most sincere advice to you is BUY ONE. As Claymore and I discussed in claymore's DIY on changing/indexing spark plugs, a dropped plug is a potential GIANT headache if the ceramic insulator cracks and allows the electrical charge to leak. Trying to decide which of the four plugs on the back of the engine is dead and causing the engine to miss would be impossible, and means that you have to completely re-do the plug job all over again. A magnetic plug socket bought cheap from Amazon.com is a great tool for our engines and makes accidental plug damage virtually impossible.

I think that 03DSM-RSX (Josh) meant well with his advice about using the coil boots to withdraw the loosened plugs, but everything that claymore just posted is true.

Regarding the installation of the Pulstar Pulse Plugs, the instructions warn about SEVERE damage resulting from installing plugs that have been dropped. Also, the coil boots fit so tightly around the ceramic plug insulators, the instructions also tell you to coat the insulators with dielectric (silicone) grease to help the boots to slide over the plugs as you install the coils/boots. With a conventional (old style) plug socket that uses foam or an o-ring inside the socket to hold onto the plug, the silicone grease (which would help to install ANY plug) would make the plug slippery and easy to fall out of the conventional socket.

(Off Topic)
Over quite a long time through various PM's I have gotten to know both claymore and 03DSM-RSX as people, not just user names on these forums. There is a LOT more to both of these guys than just what you see in their sniping at each other here in the forums. There is more than a generation of age difference between claymore and 03DSM. 03--- goes out of his way to irritate claymore, and claymore reacts while trying to be sure, as moderator, that fitfreak members are not misinformed by technical information being offered in various posts.

It is the "job" of every kid to be overconfident and over-agressive in thinking that you know more than you do. I was that way in my 20's, and so was claymore if he will admit it (claymore and I are the same age). 03DSM knows more about a lot of things than might be apparent in his needling posts aimed at claymore. For one thing, 03DSM just received a degree in Biology, which has nothing to do with automotive tech. posts. If these two gentlemen could put aside their animosity, they would find things to like and respect about each other. For a little bit of mystery--the country of Viet Nam has a significant influence on both of their lives. Maybe they can put away their hatchets and solve the mystery.

 

dats cute.

 

i agree with you maxman but then again there no need for this

 

i wonder how come he's not a moderator anymore

 

Geez guys calm down. If you wanna flame war, keep it out of useful threads. Just PM or meet up and beat the crap out of each other. Just PLEASE do not turn the forum into a giant flame war between you guys.