I thought I would share my experience today - it was good.

I have never changed plugs on a car with spark plug tubes before. I was a little apprehensive about oil leaks afterward. I bought a few sets of new tube seals from Summit Racing, Mahle GS33731 (PS69-B on the inner bag) - made in USA. There were no leaks when I started and I have no idea how old the Champion plugs were.

Each tube came out with its tube seal in place augmented by some kind of sealant. That made me a little nervous as I planned to not use sealant. I carefully cleaned each tube so that its seal surface was perfectly clean with no sealant remnants at all and I carefully wiped down the seal seat on the head. I put the new Mahle seal dry directly on the dry clean tube. Also, I removed the spark plug crush washer as advised on this forum and elsewhere. The old plugs I took out had their crush washers on.

I did not use a torque wrench (I need to get a good one) but slowly torqued each plug down quite snug. She fired right up and I let her warm up to full operating temperature. So far, fingers crossed, each tube seal is dry! I hope that continues. By the way I used Autolite AP66 plugs gapped at 0.035".

Thanks all for giving me info on the whole tube seal exercise.

Jon

Sealant isn't necessary or advisable on the plug tube seals, so you did fine putting in the new seals dry; that's how they're supposed to be. Tune-up component suggestions (and rationale) can be found here.

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Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

Thank you. I had not read that but it just did not make sense to me to put anything on those seals.

Well, my success is tempered just a bit. After a couple of weeks I'm seeing a slight leak from the cylinder #4 spark plug seal - crap. I haven't had time to pull it out and inspect it. I hope I can get it to seal. If the seal is damaged I do have extras to replace it. Almost a success.