GloPlugs:Vehicle specific?

[stoddnambuzz]

Howdy all! Sean Todd and Nic Martin here with our magic bus—we have ourselves a 1987 international bluebird bus and are looking at replacing some glowplugs as we find they do not work and here on the north coast its just too dang cold in the day to fire her up without starter fluid—yikes! First question: are glow plugs vehicle specific? i find good deals all over online for ford/ih 7.3 glowplugs, but am curious as to if i should be buying a particular recommended brand or looking for vehicle specific year. Also, upon locating the plugs, I found one plug completely corroded around the nut, and another with a completely severed wire from the head—any recommendations on going about fixing my wire issue and removing plugs without breaking one in the engine block? Thanks!

 

[brokedown-SKO]

My understanding is that the 7.3 IDI uses the same glow plugs regardless of the vehicle they were used in. I will share some experience of a friend who has this engine in his box truck - don't replace them with cheap ones unless you want to replace them again a month later.

The correct glow plug should be the Motocraft ZD9. These should last a decade: https://amzn.to/2rvgKDi


You can also test the glow plugs with a multimeter, use the resistance setting to measure ohms between the engine block and the connector on top of the plug. You should get a reading between 2 and 6 ohms (you really want between 2 and 3 ohms though), and it should be consistent across all the plugs. If you have an outlier, it's likely failing. 0 ohms is a plug that's shorted to ground, anything higher than 6 ohms isn't going to heat up properly.