Which is harder...complete engine tear-down and re-build or replacing the spark plugs in an XG350?

Am I missing something here?
Do I need to find a certified mechanic to change spark plugs now?
Looks to me like you have to take the whole induction system off before you
can get at 3 of the spark plugs.
Please tell me I'm wrong.

I was going to take them out, inspect them, and re-install with some
anti-seeze compound (40,000 miles), but now I think I'll just wait for
60,000 miles and let the shop do it when I take it in for a timing belt.
What a pain!

Dan

 

Front-wheel drive cars generally have transversely-mounted engines.
When you transversely-mount a V-type engine you generally can't get at
the back set of plugs without removing the intake manifold.

 

It's not really too bad once you realize where all the bolts are. You need
to unbolt the egr valve, and remove the 12mm bolts from the support
brackets at the back of the plenum, and the 12mm bolts and nuts attaching
the plenum to the lower intake. Unplug some doohickeys and disconnect the
air box and hose, and lift the plenum off and turn it up (this way you
don't have to disconnect the coolant lines). To put it in perspective, I
believe this takes me about 1.5 hours to do, but pays much better than
that. Just make sure you use quality platinum plugs (NGK or NipponDenso).
You don't want to have to do this twice nor do you want to pay to have it
done again in 25k miles.

 

My sister-in-law recently bought a new Chrysler Sebring convertible with the
2700 V6. The spark plugs are dead center in the valve covers making plug
changes a breeze.

 

The XG has the same design, but the intake plenum is over top of the rear
bank, so you have to remove it to get to the plugs.

 

Am I missing something here?

You have to remove the plenum in order to the rear 3 plugs. It's
really not that big of a deal, it may look intimidating but it only
takes about an hour to do the job. Buy a new plenum gasket, or if you
want to play it cheap you can probably just put a thin coat of RTV on
there and re-use it. It's a metal gasket.

The timing belt isn't very difficult either. I did that job just this
past weekend on a sonata with the V6 and found it to be a pretty
simple deal. The only thing that I found a little difficult was
manuvering the engine mount out of the engine compartment. You have to
unbolt part of it that goes into the block, it's 4 bolts, 3 of them
are one size..and the top one is different. Once you get those out,
that piece just doesn't want to come out without a fight. It took a
couple minutes of moving things around to get it out of the way.

Chris

 

Whoa! Be careful with the RTV. It must be the oxygen sensor safe type.

 

The XG timing belt is much more difficult than the Sonata. The XG has a
completely different engine which uses four cam sprockets.

Also, I'd just reuse the plenum gasket the way it is before I'd put any
rtv on it.