This Plug Read Said SEND IT… So We Turned It UP / Spark Plug reading, boosted methanol!

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:05]This is a spark plug check. Big block Chevrolet single turbo. Let me show you what the plugs look like.

[00:00:27]What's up, guys? I'm Turbo John. We're in the garage. We had a heck of a weekend racing last weekend. Made two passes. Really fast times. Let me show you what the plugs look like. This is on methanol. Check it out. Out here in the garage. Just got this thing in a couple days ago. It is now actually Wednesday and uh we have not pulled the hood off of it yet. We were ready to go make a pass. Got rained on. The rain took us out. So, we ended up uh not being able to finish the race. We had a car that was really fast. It was really capable of probably winning the race if we didn't have any issues. Let me slide this thing back just a little bit. Give myself a little bit more room.

[00:01:10]And uh but you know, it is what it is.

[00:01:12]It's racing, right, guys? So, uh we didn't quite get it.

[00:01:28]We're going to do this little squeaking thing. Are you not happy being pushed back?

[00:01:33]Listen. Can you hear it?

[00:01:40]It is ever so slightly rolling forward.

[00:01:43]That's hilarious.

[00:01:48]Do you hear it?

[00:01:52]Okay, it'll stop at some point.

[00:01:55]So, we um we got this thing made some good passes, but now we're going to do a spark plug check. Uh so, what we do when we're looking at spark plugs when we're trying to figure out uh a tune.

[00:02:11]We got our handy dandy little tools here.

[00:02:15]This is something we got off of Etsy or Amazon or somewhere. It works out pretty good. Big block Chevrolet, small black Chevrolet. You can get them for Ford.

[00:02:22]How it's numbered? It's got little pegs on it. These are really cool. It's just 3D printed. And so, pop that up there.

[00:02:30]And then, uh, pull the plugs out. So, I'm going to pull them all out one by one and we'll just pull them all out and, uh, we'll see what they look like here and see what we got. I mean, that's all we can do, right? Uh, so the difference Oh, I should have pulled the valve the vents off.

[00:02:51]But when you're pulling the make sure, let me turn on the lights in here. We got these gangster Scarlet Solutions lights.

[00:03:01]That makes a difference on being able to see. Let's see here.

[00:03:07]Watch this.

[00:03:10]Bam.

[00:03:12]Now there is light. So, let's pull these off um real quick. See what we got. Put them in order.

[00:03:22]So, what we're looking for on the spark plugs, how to read spark plugs. Like I said, these have only got two passes on them. So, they're going to look This is going to be a learning experience for y'all if you've never seen spark plugs after a couple passes. Boosted methanol.

[00:03:44]Cranked it up and pulled it in the trailer. Uh, boosted methanol.

[00:03:49]They had about 40 lbs of boost on it.

[00:03:52]Uncle Mike built these headers really good. So, you can see that I've I can get to all these with this tool here. the other side. The last two I have to use a normal socket. But on this side over here, I can get to all of them with the extension [music] here with the swivel socket.

[00:04:18][snorts] Oh yeah, looking good so far at a glance.

[00:04:28]I'm going to show y'all in a minute.

[00:04:36]So, remember, you don't have to crank these things in there to death. I do use a little bit of grease on the threads.

[00:04:44]I used to use anti-seize, but my buddy Michael Bavaro and Joey said that that was a bad idea.

[00:04:54]So, I don't do that anymore. I just use grease. They said the anti-seize actually sometimes [music] gets a little bit more sticky.

[00:05:05]See what we got here.

[00:05:13]This thing [music] is squeaky as I'll get out.

[00:05:35]So, we're going to do some individual cylinder tuning. And um so that's why I'm pulling them out, keeping them uh in order where they come out of the holes. And the reason why you want to do that is so that you can make your your tuning adjustments, right? So because we know that the Holly and other EFI systems have individual s cylinder tuning capabilities.

[00:06:06]So it just makes sense to do that when you when you can.

[00:06:14]And now and reading spark plugs is one of those things that there's if you show five different racers different spark plugs, you will get five different answers usually on what you need to do. And so um in each engine is different. Uh if you ever watch any of uh Fueltech's videos, Lewis um he made a a video one time and they were [snorts] talking about horsepower and uh and whoever was on the the dyno, I don't remember, but I'll never forget this statement he made.

[00:06:57]And you know, we always say spark plugs are the the only thing that will tell you what is actually happening in the hole. And that is a true statement. That is 100% a true statement. But the statement he made that I had never heard before is that um some engines the plugs have to look bad, what you would normally call bad to make power.

[00:07:28]And other times plugs if they look bad like that then they will burn themselves up.

[00:07:38]So you, you know, being on a dyno is the really the probably the only true way to see which way the the actual engine is going to make the most power based on the plug. And then once you do that, then you get a reference, right? So you got a reference now and you say, okay, well, this plug needs to look like it is uh about to destroy [music] itself in order to to work like it should.

[00:08:07]But yeah, let's see here. So, I got all them out. Big block Chevrolet is not super difficult. Um, small block Chevrolet is a [sighs and snorts] a little more difficult sometime. Um, okay. So, let's go. Let's go look at them real fast. Let's go get in some better light so that you can you can see these and I'll tell you what I see and then you can tell me what you see.

[00:08:38]Huh. Okay, I got my preliminary thought here.

[00:08:44]Oh, yeah. I'm going to be able to get some definitely some good individual cylinder tuning out of these. Okay, let's just let's just set them up here.

[00:08:53]Let me get the camera and bring it a little closer. So, it's very important not to drop this um because if I drop it, then I'm going to lose all the information and then I'll have to throw all the plugs away as well. So, uh I'm going to try not to do this video um like a a lot of editing. Let's see if it works out. See how it works.

[00:09:17]Okay, so we're in the garage lighting here.

[00:09:26]Man, plugs always look different when you're when you're doing the videos. Um, let me let me get another light. Hang on. Okay, so gotten another little light here. Oh, yeah. That's a little better.

[00:09:39]Okay, so what am I looking at? So, the base ring. So, the part of the base ring, uh, the electrode, see the electrode is generally what you read timing on. Now, these are number 10 plugs. So if they were number 11 plugs, they would show colder. So the timing, everybody talks about timing marks.

[00:10:00][music] And you can see that's still got cadmium on it. Uh you can see where the cadmium is starting to kind of flake off a little bit on the plug. And it goes to like right here. That right there is starting to get a timing mark. And like this one over here, that number four, see how it looks like it's got a little bit more discoloring? I would probably say that is about where the timing mark is on that plug is about you see the the shiny spot. So that one it looks like they need a couple more degrees of timing possibly. Um now fueling what I'm looking at on fueling here is the base ring. So the base ring see how that one is mostly silver on number four all the way around. Um you see it's mostly all silver. Cadium is still on it.

[00:10:50]number two there. See how it's a little dark to the left? About a quarter burn.

[00:10:55]There's a lot of people that say that they like to run them about a quarter to a half burn cadmium. That's what they mean when they're talking about that.

[00:11:05]This one and this one, they have no cadmium burn hardly. So, those are probably just a little richer. Number six is definitely got a little bit of happening. But, so you want these even, right? So, probably what I'm going to do is cylinder number two, I'm probably going to fatten cylinder number two up 5%. [music] And I would like to get all the cadmium back on that the same. All the timing marks look like they're similar. I'm not really doing much individual cylinder tuning um on the on the cadium or on the uh timing. I am doing some individual cylinder on fueling now. So, let's look at this side over here and see what we see.

[00:11:45]Okay. So, number one, see how it looks really pretty decent. Uh, seven looks decent. Number five looks Number five looks extremely hot. Uh, compared to the rest, [music] you can see the cadmium burn is about halfway. And you see that, oh, I dropped it. And you see the timing marks.

[00:12:07]Let's see if you can see them a little bit better like that. So, that one right there is a very good explanation. Uh, number number seven needs probably two or three% fuel to get to look like the rest of them. Number five, it probably needs 10% fuel. It looks a lot hotter.

[00:12:25]It looks a lot leaner. Number three, that one looks like it needs uh probably 3 or 4% 5% as well. And then number one looks pretty good. And you can see you can just see the way you can see that how it is. the plugs just look as I back up and zoom in some you can see it even more. So that's what I'm gonna do on that. So timing we're not going to really do anything. Number three timing I would probably say number three timing is probably low. Uh see how it's got all the cadium still all the way to the end.

[00:12:58]It is starting to flake off a little bit but it's still there. It's not burning.

[00:13:03]So we've made two passes. Um and so you know obviously the more passes you make the more heat they get. But that number seven, see that little dark area? I think that's pretty much a a perfect timing line right there. Uh so [music] number number three looks like it probably could use a degree of timing uh to get to look like the rest of them.

[00:13:23]But the rest of them I'm kind of starting to see the same kind of patterns. Uh so we might add game plan.

[00:13:30]Like we said, we're going to add fuel to number five, number seven. I'm going to add probably one degree of time into number three. And I'm going to do this.

[00:13:38]I'm going to set my computer up with me.

[00:13:40]I'm going to take the plugs in the house and then make these changes as we go.

[00:13:45]Right there. Um number number two, we're going to add 5%. We're going to add a little bit of fuel.

[00:13:54]Probably add like 1 or 2% on number six.

[00:13:56]And timing wise, uh possibly possibly number eight.

[00:14:05]No, I think it's going to be okay. It's It's good. So, that number two number two looks like it needs uh a degree or two of timing as well.

[00:14:18]So, that is I don't know. What do y'all see? Do y'all see the same thing I'm seeing? Do y'all see what I'm looking for when I'm doing the methanol? I've got my little light here. And that's how I can make it so that you can see it's shiny. And all I did, I did not clean them. I didn't do anything to them but blow uh the moisture um and the condensation off of the plug. Didn't wipe them. Didn't touch them down. Some people say wipe them down and but I don't ever do that. I pull it straight out. Sometimes if it's a little greasy or something, I'll spray it with like brake clean just to kind of clean it, but normally uh that's all I do is I just look at it just like this. So that is plug reading for me. Do you see the same thing? All right, guys. So let me know what do you see. Do you see the same thing I see uh with the tuning? I'm not an expert, but this is how we tune our boosted big block Chevrolet.

[00:15:08]Appreciate it, guys.