cap and rotor; spark plugs

[Tommy Boy]

The maintenance schedule in my owners manual says to change these items at around 90,000 miles.
Other sources, here, mention much more frequent intervals.
Anybody care to shed some light on this.

[cheezthis]

I don't know my interval, but it's definitely less than 90k. I can usually tell they're going bad with these issues:

- hesitation in low rpms, especially heavy load
- decrease mpg
- idle has intermittent, small misfires

They can be tough to detect if you're new to them. They're all easy to replace. Dist. cap, rotor, plugs, and wires shouldn't take more than 30 min.

[Tommy Boy]

My car came with platinum plugs which are supposed to last like 90,000 miles. Why does the maintenance schedule, here on this site, say to change them out so much sooner?

[coolhandluke]

My project car hasn't even been running a year and I'v already replaced these items once. The cap is about $18 and the plugs are about $8. Cap was replaced because my used Distributor gave me the red death and the a fuel issue fouled my plugs, but neither of these costs are very major. I would recommend replacing everything few years as opposed to 90k. Some of us drive our cars 30k a year though.

[Ford Prefect]

The maintenance schedule in my owners manual says to change these items at around 90,000 miles.
Other sources, here, mention much more frequent intervals.
Anybody care to shed some light on this.

I just checked the owner's manual on acura.com, and it says 60,000 miles. I think I'm still running my original plugs (I'd have to check my records).