I just spent some time on the telephone with Autolite’s technical training manager, Jay Buckley, who is also a car crafter with a Windsor-powered ’67 Mustang. Among perhaps a half-dozen spark plug tips and tricks he shared with me that I will use in upcoming blogs is one about antiseize. Did you know that slobbering a bunch of antiseize on the threads of your spark plugs will slow down the rate of heat transfer from the plug to the head? The worst place, according to Buckley, is on the tapered seat, which is where the most heat transfer occurs between the spark plug and the cylinder head. Even just a small amount of antiseize is the equivalent of using a hotter heat range spark plug. Also, if you have installed stainless steel thread inserts like a Heli-Coil into the cylinder head, this is equivalent to using a one-step-hotter heat range spark plug, which means you’ll need to use a one-step-colder plug just to keep the plug in the stock heat range. Over the course of the next few weeks, I’ll relate several more little tricks like this that I’ve learned from the Autolite people.