Well, it was not on anything military, but an old E reg sierra 2Ltr pinto, our daily driver, about march time decided to carry out some maintenance and changed the plugs (NGK), leads, dist cap and fuel filter as I had not done any of this for some years, no reason to change any of it, did not have any running issues at all just though it was about time to do it.
Come november time it started getting colder like it does and the wife started saying it was getting hard to start in the mornings, (never ever had anything like this with it before) it did however eventually start and ran fine even when hot also would restart when hot too.
Steadily got worse and worse till it would not start. Discounting the plugs as they were "new NGK's" tried everything else ran out of ideas so got a friend round to help and we started working through it in a methodical manor. First thing he said was lets see the spark, I took a plug out and gapped it and he saw it was an NGK plug, he said well thats your problem, pointing to the plug, ? I said, ngk throw them away and get some proper ones. We did test the spark and to say it was weak and tiny and only a yellow glimmer was an understatement. I had kept the old motorcraft plugs which we tried and lo and behold got a masive fat blue spark. !!!!!! fitted the old ones back in and had no more problems.
Another friend who has a Triumph 5SW and after an engine rebuild he could not get more than about 10 miles out of a plug, he use to swop them round, but it got worse and worse down to only a couple of miles !!!! they were NGK's too changed to Champion's and I think he is still on the first plug he put in !!
Draw your own conclusions to this but I will not ever touch another NGK plug.