I just pulled the plugs out of my chevelle from the last race and startups (haven't been pulled since september) I pulled them to spray the cylinders with wd-40 while the motor sits and waits for teh new lifters. We haven't ever run this motor lean enough to melt pistons, in fact we have always run it conservative usually 1-2 jet sizes fatter, and it has never hit over 195° at the end of the track at full throttle.

The plugs had a silvery color on the porcelin when looking at it with a spark plug light. I am running 100% 108 octane VP race fuel (green). What do you guys think?

Do you use anti-sieze? Some race fuel will spot silver shades on the porcelin, but its the diamond sparkles to be concerned about. Is it silver or diamond, all plugs or a few?

It is more of a silver shade, like someone put a light coat of silver spray paint on them smile.gif ...it is on most of the spark plugs I would say 6 of them...no anti-seize

Also since the last race the car has been started about 6 times of which the last time I had a hard time starting it because it hadn't been started in probably 3-4weeks. So I ended up flooding the motor out. Once it started everything was fine. I personally think that it is due to the fact that the motor hasn't been "run" since september and the plugs really only have idle stuff on them (dominator carburetor) which is really fat on the idle circuit.

What kind of fuel are you running? Most pump gasses will mark up the plugs with their funky additives. Also note that some plug types seem to be easier to read than others... used to run NGK B8ES and changed over to a slightly colder autolite race plug and the tune became more apparent. If you're not running pump gas, reference the manufacturers info - VP fuels as an example make reading plugs very easy by tinting the porcelain really differently based on rich/lean. One more thing to note - if you really want to know what your carb is doing under power, you MUST shut down the engine at the top of the track then check the plugs. If you even idle back to the staging lanes, you have covered up whatever reading you made under power.

All that said, sounds like you're on the rich side. As long as you don't have little silver specks on there (i.e. piston parts), you're OK.

HTH,
jC.

Thanks guys.

Lugnutz...actually idleing back does not erase the run...during the run a ring is produced inside the plug that can be seen. After every pass the old rings stay and a new one is produced. This is how we used to tun our race boat as well.

it could be glazing from too hot of a plug,the white porcilan can appear silver when glazed

this overheating of the plug can cause the hard starting problems you mentioned

try a colder plug,see if it works better.