Aaron Robinson: Mistakes Were Made, Investigations Are Ongoing, and ... - Car and Driver
It began with the gnawing feeling that my 1995 Mitsubishi Montero, 121,000 miles, needed new spark plugs. Well, over seven years of faithful, rock-solid service, they had never been changed. There was no evidence that they needed changing, but it seemed like the nice thing to do. I also bought a set of pretty, blue NGK ignition cables that didn’t stay pretty for long. On the Montero, you must remove the intake plenum to get at the plugs because, apparently, four engineering teams on five continents speaking seven languages designed this truck. Don’t even get me started on the timing belt, which cost me a week of labor and about a quart of blood to change. On the plenum, there are nuts and bolts all over, hidden under blobs of grease and behind brackets and cables and camouflaged like phasmids to disappear in the metal forest. I unboxed the new plugs, laid them out on a towel, set their gaps, and one by one glided them in on a sticky smear of electrical grease. I routed the cables, attempted to wipe my filthy fingerprints and blood off. Source: www.caranddriver.com
