Recycling Spark Plugs

[zakmattingly]

I was curious about this and did a search here and came up with nothing. So I went on to Google and found that some places might take them by the bucketfuls for the steel. I also found out that some contain small amounts of platinum in them. Although I didn't look into how to get this out as it seems like more of an e-scrapper type of thing. Collecting small amounts at a time of the really good stuff. So just a heads up incase anybody wants to look more into it. I'll just set the few I got aside for now.

[Rich]

The center electrode of the plug could be made from numerous different metals but you would need a lot of plugs to make it worth your wild. To get it out, just smash the ceramic surrounding it.

[harrisvh]

Glow plugs have a solid platinum helical wire filament recessed into the plugs tip. Typically they are used in very small combustion engines such as you find in model cars, airplanes and similar stuff. The ignition is accomplished by a combination of heating from compression and heating from the glow plug.
Glowplugs are also used in diesel engines -i found this out when i wondered why it was so ****ed expensive to replace them!

They aren't used in typical petrol/gas engines as they work through spark ignition and not compression combustion.

[Mechanic688]

As far as I know, all diesels use glow plugs to fire the engine in winter, My Chevy V8 had glow plugs and a warmer for wintertime.

[c4f5]

Older diesels will not have them. I believe the glow plug in a diesel concept came about in the later 70's.

As far as spark plugs go, mine get stuffed in a junk car body.

[johnnybeegoods]

Newer diesels have grid heaters instead. They seem to work better too.

[c4f5]

Yep, didn't think of that....too rich for my blood

[ChildhoodDream]

I have many spark plugs with some of them being HUGE. They are from old motorcycles and machinery. Some are very interesting looking.

The newer ones I toss in containers as the arts and craft folks are interested in many types.

Also have many new unused spark plugs around the place that I ended up with.