Accelerated spark plug wear?

[455 Bravo Uniform]

What would cause faster spark plug wear? I could’ve sworn that my plugs were replaced about 200 hours ago; I’ll have to check the logs to be sure. Many of the center electrodes are already way football shaped and now look worse than the ones they replaced.

IO-470. Champion massives. Rich of peak. Cyl temps less than 380. Power settings 22”, 2450 rpm most of the time. Have done commercial maneuvers for training during this period. Flown below freezing in Indiana up to >100 deg F in TX, NM, AZ.

I did a search on POA for “spark plug wear”, only 2 hits, learned some stuff, but didn’t find the answer I was looking for.

Swap Spark Plug Locations To Equalize Wear

Teach me about airplane spark plug wear

 

[Domenick]

Are the Champions the old style with the internal "replaceable" resistor?
To check, screw off the top connector and look down inside the barrel. If you see a slot head, you have an internal resistor. A further check by unscrewing the screw will confirm. Toss them. Buy Tempests.

 

[Mikey52]

200 hours on massive plugs is pretty good. I have about 900 on a set of tempest fine wires, with only one failure at the 800 hr mark. Even a tempest resistor can go bad, but they do usually last longer. I remember on r1830's and r985's that if we got a 150 hours out of a plug we were happy.