Vauxhall spark plug assembly

This one is a minor rant, it's about a stupid design that a manufacturer went for, apparently for no other reason than to be different, or to make parts difficult/unique to them!

This is for the Vauxhall Corsa (D edition 2010), and it came about when I was carrying out a routine service. I decided to change the spark plugs, so duly took the top plastic cover off the engine, and found that Vauxhall did things differently!

This is the top of the spark plugs, no rubber boots per plug or anything "normal", this large block houses a set of 4 rubber boots with springs in them that push down onto the spark plugs.

Now, slight problem here. The rubber boots are a very tight fit around the plug housings. Add to that heat, cooling, vibration, etc. You can imagine the rubber isn't so great! Therefore seeing a crack in the rubber boots isn't exactly surprising.

However, what is a problem is that when these rubber boots have cracks or damage to them, they can cause the spring in the middle not to make perfect contact with the spark plugs, and hey presto you get:

Which is of course because the electrical contacts aren't connecting properly to the plug!
Luckily you can source just the rubber boots from our friend ebay and replace that alone, otherwise the whole thing is almost £150!

So I've ordered the above to solve the problem. Thanks Vauxhall for making that more difficult than it should be.