More car maintenance.

I figure since Dave gave me this car, I might as well maintain it properly. In this particular case, that meant new spark plugs and drive belts. $30 down the toilet, or so I thought.

The drive belts, which took all of 10 minutes to change, solved the squishy belt noise. This was a given, but still nice to not hear.

No belts! Ahhh!

On to the plugs. Since I do not own a service manual for Butch, I scoured the internets and found a couple of DIY tutorials on how to change the plugs. Each cautioned that it was a total pain in the ass… ok, sure, but it isn’t possible to be more of a pain in the ass than the Boxster plug change. It wasn’t. Turns out that their pain-in-the-assness was totally unfounded when working with even a 2-year-old dog’s worth of common sense. Junebug can vouch, but Bear cannot. Move the crap that is in your way out of your way (battery, airbox) and use proper tools (extensions, spark plug socket, and torque wrench). Easy, takes 30 minutes. 16 ft-lbs. Done.

Interestingly, the OE plugs were platinum “high-mileage”, but the manual stated 30k change intervals. For $6 and 30 minutes, it wasn’t really a big deal. A nice side bonus is much smoother running, and the odd off-throttle lurching and hanging is greatly reduced. I guess copper plugs really are better, at least for Butches.

Oh, since this place is supposed to be about bikes, here:

I rode the titaniumy one a couple few times last week. It was awesome. Unfortunately, you get no ride report.