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After sitting in heavy traffic for some time the other day, my car became quite groggy and mis-fired.
Plugs, leads and distributer??? On inspection of the plugs, it seemed that a couple oiled up. Only having owned the car a year, I guess that the plugs have been in the car for some time.

They are Denso Iridium ITF20. Although they seem very good plugs, are there an alternatives, considering cost and performance? I guess buying plugs for a car with that many cyclinders is never going to be cheap !
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The exotic metal plugs are fine for the highly controlled fuel delivery of an EFI car.

On a carburetor equipped car such as ours, they do not do well, and will foul as yours have.

Autolite 25 is a good start for a basic resistor plug. Cheap and historically correct for a carbed Cleveland.

Now, you could actualy have an oil problem too.

But as for plugs, this is where you want to go.

Larry
What plug you need depends on what heads you are using.
If you have stock ford 4v iron heads they shoud use Motorcraft AF32's. If you insist on a resisitor plug then it's an AF-32R.
You gaps also vary according to your ignition.
If you are using a points didtributor I believe the gap is .018 (it's so long ago I might be wrong).
If you are running a solid state Motorcraft or equivelent then the gap is .032".

Other aftermarket heads use different plug types.
Did you note the color of the plugs? Mine was recently running too rich giving black plugs and irratic running as well. Leaned it out a little on the carb and it runs much better, in my case anyway. A little oil on some plugs may mean leaky valve seals as well, especially if you get a nice big puff of blue smoke on start up after it sits a while from the oil seeping in down from the heads. I am no technical expert, but it is what I saw in an pretty descriptive auto engine text book recently.
... .018" is way to small for spark plugs! That small of a gap is more in the order of the 'Points' gap. For What It's Worth; The 'Book' lists the 351 Cleveland spark plug gaps at: .032"-.034" for 'Points' ignitions and .054" for electronic ignitions. An experienced (with Clevelands) Dyno technition, had stated in the recent past, that he has not seen any power increase what-so-ever with a spark plug gap Over .050"...
No,.

Pertronix is a points replacement, not high energy. The coil energy is still the same so itrequire points-style gaps in the .035" range.

The msd can utilize a little more than the typical HEI. .06-.08, depending what your compression ratio is. Higher compression, less gap.
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