honestly, it is the second simplest spanner job you can do to a car. Do it yourself

 

It took me about 15-20 minutes to do mine. And Im just a ham fisted amateur.

 

Do them yourself!

 

It's easy enough to do yourself, but an indy mechanic shouldn't charge you a lot really, It's normally a 15minute job but a mechanic will probably want 30mins labour unless you can just tempt him with beer money.

 

15 mins. even if they bother to use a torque wrench and do it properly, which they wont

 

I never bother with a torque wrench for the plugs either.

 

I'm thinking about doing the plugs myself in the near future. What is the correct way to tighten them without a torque wrench? Hand tight, then a quarter/half turn?

 

Me neither but it is good practise, especially if its a alu head!

 

alu heads with tapered plugs really dont get done up tight at all, so im not suprised when i see those ford zetec threads with spark plug issues

 

most cars are alu topped these days, do it by hand till its tight. never had any problems other than clearing out threads on dirty heads.

 

Took me about 5-10 mins to do mine on my Focus. You do need a socket set with an extension bar and a sparkplug socket. So probably cheaper to get a mechanic to quickly do it unless you can borrow one.

I was a bit scared that the plugs would be stuck or that i would cross thread but it all went fine and cost me nothing. Just make sure to hand tighten first so that you can feel its not cross threading.

 

good advice that

 

Also, get some copper grease and apply it around the thread of the new plugs. You'll thank your lucky stars you did next time you replace them

 

Depends on the car, mine or my father's would be about 20 to 30 minutes, as you need to remove the engine cover, and the coil assembly, and there's 8 of them. My brother's or the family abuse machine, 5 to 10 minutes. So what's the car?

 

It all depends if it has an Intake Manifold going right over a bank of Cylinders that you have to take off before you can get to them, like mine

Good designing Toyota

 

How long would it take on a 1.7 Boxer?

 

EA-82?

 

No, Alfa used to do a 1.7 (and 1.5) boxer engine. Was fitted to the Sud, 33, Arna and some early 145/6s.

 

I changed some on a MX5 once. Turned into a nightmare - one had seized in - no copperslip applied on fitting!