I second that, go with the TM's. I had them in my GS300 and I never looked back.

 

ngk iridiums

 

what are torque masters? any links?

 

Here you go: http://www.extremespark.com/ . Are copper plugs really out perform the platinum plugs? Anyone had this experience (used both) to make a comparison?

 

Copper plugs are widely used in the high performance/aftermarket high power crowd. I think they conduct better than the platinum plugs. Also, copper plugs are more easily damaged...which is a good thing because if you have a bad tune on the motor it's better to have the plugs crap out first instead of the motor. The other advantage is that they cost like $1-2 a plug. I bought all 6 of my NGK6097's for about $8 including tax lol! Obviously the downside is that they have to be changed every 5-10k miles or so.

A more recent development is the iridium plugs. Many people are switching over to these because they are near indestructable. It can go both ways though... Up side is that in a hard driven highly tuned motor, those plugs will last up to around 30-40k miles. The downside is that since the plugs are so hardy...you better have a damn good tune or else thats one less thing to save your ***. The other obvious downside is the price. They can cost about $50-60 for a set of 6 plugs.

As for platinum plugs...they were a good improvement over the copper plugs but they aren't even close to the iridium plugs. Under normal "most people" driving conditions, they lasted quite a bit longer than the copper plugs, but people running highly tuned engines stuck with the copper plugs because the platinum plugs were crapping out pretty fast in a hard driven harsh engine environment. They also cost a pretty penny over the coppers. Once the iridium plugs came on market, many manufacturers started to drop the platinums in favor of the iriduims.

Anyways...long story short. Buy iridium plugs! On a stock motor driven "normally" they can last up to around 120k miles. Toyota dropped all of their platinum plugs for all their vehicles in favor of iridium at around 2000-2001. That's why on older GS's the manual says to use platinum and change plugs around 60k while on the 01+ GS's they say to use iridium plugs and change at 120k.