You said that your brother got to the spark plugs without jacking up the car. How did he do it? Mine sits too low to the ground to get under it, or maybe I'm too doggone fat!!!!

With assistance from my neighbor who also has a 76 we were able to get to all of them, we were able to get to 1, 2, 3 and 4 from the top, and 5, 6, 7 and 8 from the bottom, one of the problems was that we originally tried with flexible neck ratchets with or without an extension ( I wanna say a three inch cause we didn't have a 1) and because of the flexible neck we weren't able to torque as much without it twisting at odd angles to the plug and breaking the end of the plug off. Once we tried with a solid ratchet we limited the range of turning motion but we were able to get the plugs in and out without breaking any more. hehehe

I am 6' tall, 140 lbs. so that gives you some idea of my girth which allows me to shimmy underneath to get them from the bottom.

I have to crawl underneath the front part of the doors with my head sideways to fit, the wheel well itself doesn't allow me to get to the first four from underneath.


So far I have gotten it running and it idles of its own volition for as long as it wants to, I ran a compression check and that came out good, but there are a few issues the most annoying of which is the transmission linkage is off so that the park position on the stick is reverse on the transmission and so on down the line. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if it didn't have the saftey starter stuffage so I can only start in what would be park and neutral, and if you follow, that means I can only start the car in drive and reverse!!! Right now I have it parked in the garage and I'm toiling at the interior (sanding down rusty floor pan and seat rails, etc. etc.) until I figure out what I'm gonna do about that.

I guess the blessing and the curse is that there is enough wrong with the car that if I don't have the money or haven't figured out how to deal with a problem there is always something else I can be working on. hehehe

I will start construction on a site soon to document (with photo) what I am doing, but somewhere my priorities keep me glued to the car instead of developing a site to tell other people about it. I wonder why that could be. ;)

|UPDATED|6/6/2002 2:16:43 PM|/UPDATED|

|QUOTE|Forrest said: With assistance from my neighbor who also has a 76 we were able to get to all of them.......
.........
........my priorities keep me glued to the car instead of developing a site to tell other people about it. I wonder why that could be. ;)|/QUOTE|

Just thought'd I'd say.... Now, that's what I mean by a quality post!!

I don't think I would mess with that transmission linkage. What a great anti-theft device. Who would ever think of putting an automatic trans in gear to start it !! My plugs have over twenty thousand on them and they are staying there till the engine comes out this summer. With the air conditioning compressor on one side and the power brake booster on the other...well, I really don't want to spend 8 or 9 hours changing plugs. My real trouble will start with the new engine...I'm gonna have to change those plugs eventually while the engine is still in the car.

Eastwood has a great little spark plug tool. Item # 46113, cost $17.99. It may solve your tight clearence problems.
www.eastwoodco.com
Dutch

|QUOTE|Forrest said: I just purchased a 1976 as a fixer upper and one of the first things we did was replace the spark plugs which even though they were difficult to get to were not as difficult as I initially expected with the exception of #7 which we can get to with a flexible neck ratchet with extension, however because of the angle when we screw in the new plug and attempt to remove the ratchet it then breaks the end off of the spark plug. (we tried three times and broke each one consistently, right now it is just sitting with #7 finger tight which ain't no good).

Any suggestion on the appropriate tool combination to successfully replace it?

Thanks


|/QUOTE|I changed no's 1,3,2,4, from the top, and 5,7,6,8, from underneath. Almost impossible to do all from the top. I could have probably gotten 6 out of 8 from the top, but I thought it was easier to do half of them..