I'm talking about changing the spark plugs. Today is when I planned on doing it because both me and my wife have the day off but it didn't feel right.
Get ready for some hippie shit.
I mentioned laziness earlier because that may well be the case but I don't feel like I'm doing it for that reason (putting off this project for a day or two). I happen to believe in the Law of Attraction and more importantly in this case, intuition.
I know from experience that when I get that sudden urge to go fix something NOW and I do it, I always do a better job. Why? Your subconscious or maybe even conscious mind just realized something about the project - maybe something you were wondering about how you're gonna install or maybe there was a step you weren't sure about.
Your intuition basically said to you, "You have the rest of today off as well as the time and tools to do it and since you are now prepared mentally, go do this project right now. It is a good time." Same thing when it's backwards. I'm confident I can do the job but it IS starting to get very hot here in Florida.
I guarantee you I will do a better job in the morning starting around 7. My mind is clear and it's still cool outside.
Do you see what I mean? I would recommend that if you strongly feel like you should wait for seemingly no reason and you have the time to put it off a little, do that.
Enough of that. Today I topped off the oil. The car goes through about a quart every 45 days or so. Initially I thought there might be a problem but when I read the owner's manual, it says the car naturally burns oil. It burns more if the oil is dirty. The reason for this is that 1uz engines keep oil in the cylinders when you turn it off. In most cars, the pistons aren't actually lubricated by oil for a second until the engine gets going. The benefit is less wear and tear on the engine reulting in a longer life.
I was shown a sign to do it - paint the rims black. I saw these awesome caps at the auto store and while they didn't have purple, they had blue. Awesome.
There is a constant check engine light that sometimes goes off for a couple weeks that I want to check. I have to find an OBDI scanner but also I'm gonna have to clean this port.
Somebody please tell me... WHAT IS THIS STUFF? It's hard to get off... Very sticky.
Anyway I have to clean this and I will begin to clean the engine aswell when I do the spark plugs. It makes sense because that involves taking off a bunch of plastic pieces that I can clean while they're off.
I want to show you my engine bay. This is the before but I also want to point out that I decided to put that big plastic piece for the intake back on and let me nust say that Lexus knew what they were doing.
Before I did this, my car was KINDA having a rough idle which I thought was the spark plugs but all of that was eliminated by putting a plastic intake part back. My thought process was that the hood was essentially an inch and a half open that cold air would be able to get in the engine bay so screw it right? Wrong.
Putting this plastic piece back on did the following. Eliminated the slightly rough idle, keeps my engine cooler, and the car got back a bunch of power when it's hot out. I attributed it to just the 98 degree Florida weather (ofcourse a car isn't going to perform its best in conditions like that). When it was cool in the morning and at night, the car just drove better. It was making more power and probably getting better mileage. Some of you see where I'm going with this. The plastic cover made my car behave the same at 98 degrees.
It just needed the incoming air and not the swirling, mixed engine bay air! I am convinced by this (if I wasn't before) that stuff like aftermarket intakes are only useful if your car doesn't already have a setup where it grabs air from outside. Then there's no difference in terms of the air that is being sucked in but in a case like that, you can prefab your own intakes that is directly facing incoming fresh air. In race cars, they'll put it in place of a headlight sometimes.
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