Pajero Owners Club of South Africa

If your petrol engined Pajero is running a bit rough, or very rough, using way too much fuel, etc, you might have a fouled spark plug. Especially, if you have an oil leak in close vicinity to one or a few of the plugs. This is the sparkplug I pulled from my 2.6, near an oil leak, against the firewall.. This is the first cylinder closest to the firewall. I don't know what number it is. As you can see, if has a lot of gunk on it.

have you pulled the others as well to rule out pingig or lean running?

Yes, the other three were fine, with a normal amount of white corrosion for being several years old.. I suspect the gaps in all of them were off a tad too. I have to blame the previous owner. None of the other three had the same issues as that first one. In New Mexico back in January of 2010, a shop there said that I could expect that plug to foul again as there was an oil leak very close to it. I replaced all four plugs yesterday. The only issue I had was the second plug from the grill was really, really tight and I was worried it was going to break as I tried to unscrew it. It finally came out, and it looked like the threads on the sparkplug were damaged... the new one threaded in and tightened fine.

The Pajero now accelerates faster and more smoothly in gears 1-3, but still lugs a bit in 4 and 5 and has a hard time if not impossible time reaching 55 mph. Any ideas? I still suspect a clogged carb.