The owner's manual on my '12 TL 2WD says it came with NGK plugs model # DILZKR7A11G. Were they later superceded by # ILZKR7B11G (w/out the D)? What is the difference?
I bought a set of the of the B plugs in January 2022 thinking they were OEM but I see a lot of recent reivews on Ebay and Amazon stating reasons why buyers suspected they are not OEM. I noticed poor mileage over the last three months and pulled them a couple of days ago to check their condition. After 13 months and less than 5000 miles the gap on all six was almost 50% greater than new. Are there counterfeits out there and how do you avoid them (besides going to a dealer$hip)?
All advice is appreciated.

 

buy them from a reputable seller like an online dealer (curryacuraparts.com or hondaautomotiveparts.com or something).

Or Rockauto.com

 

Of course, it all depends on where you bought this fake and how much you paid for it, these are real
spark plugs should not be cheaper than $60-70 per set.

 

Spark plugs from Rockauto are desirable to check, because some unscrupulous buyers buy real ones and then return a fake, and due to negligence, Rockauto can sell you a fake, I encountered this problem 2 times, so be careful.

 

did u encounter the fakes at RockAuto? I purchased a set from them last year but still haven’t installed them but they do look legit 🤷‍♂️

 

Yes, I received fake spark plugs from rockauto (4 out of 6), but after returning and re-ordering, they sent me real ones, the last time I ordered links, at first they sent me 1 Moog in a box of TRW and 1 TRW in a TRW box, after request for a replacement, they sent me links from a completely unknown manufacturer in a TRW boxes, I gave up and sent everything back. This is a big company with a lot of negligent employees so you should always double check what you get.

 

So...fake NGK's are out there. What about the difference in model #s in my original post?

 

The D is silent

Idk...both have identical specs. Get out your magnifiers and do some web research.

 

My 2 Cents... I've been running the new NGK Ruthenium's from RockAuto for about a year now and never looked back.

NGK 96358 Ruthenium HX

As a bonus, they are slightly cheaper than the NGK Iridiums.

 

How can one know it's a fake just by looking at it?

 

 

My God, man. That is nuts. It's comically bad.

What's most upsetting is that Rockauto is a trusted company, you know. It's not like it's some seller on Alibaba or eBay.

And I was about to order some new plugs, so I came here for advice on NGK Ruthenium Vs. NGK Iridium.

Thanks for the heads-up on the fakes.

 

Normally, I go with copper. Not for my CL. I just bought that. The copper is for a 4 cylinder, and the plugs take a grand total of 5 to 10 minutes. I change them ever 5k miles along with the synthetic oil.

Yes, 5K. Why? Because it's so fuckin' easy to do, so fuckin' cheap, and It presents a great time to examine the plugs to see how shit is running.

Why copper? Because as far as I know it's still the best conductor out of all the metals used in plugs even today. I could totally be wrong because I haven't researched this shit in an awful long time.