Which Spark Plug?

[Ray Lobato]

Hi Jimiday,
What I mean is you will get x-amount of voltage out of your ignition coil. Lets say 12KV(for example). Now that 12KV will travel through the plug wires and to the spark plug. New carbon composition plug wires will pretty much do the same thing, how ever they will degrade in time and you will loose some voltage. Now you only have 9KV. You replace the old carbon composition wires with with new Splitfire wires. You are back up to 12KV. You did not gain power. You got back power that you lost from the old plug wires. To gain power, you must generate more than you had before, and you are not doing this by just replacing the plug wires. I hope this clears things up. Dead Link Removed
Now you have 80K on those plugs, I would bet that you need new plugs. Look at the electrodes, they should be pretty chewed up by now. When you change the plugs and add the wires, you are getting back the power that the old plugs and wires were robbing from you. Dead Link Removed You are not wasting your money. It's time to change them out and gain the lost power back. I just bought some Plat 4+ myself and my wires are in the mail. Getting upgraded plug wires means you don't have to chang them as soon, but even the upgraded wires WILL HAVE TO BE CHANGED SOME TIME in the future, just not as soon as the carbon composition wires. Hope this helps. Dead Link Removed

The reason you get "seat of the pants results" is over time your trucks performance slowly deminishes, weaker spark, using more gas, not as fast. All this happens so slowly that you don't recognize it and get used to it, but when you tune it all up you got that power back and you notice it. Keeping records of your gas milage will give you an indication of how well your truck is doing. I know that I get around 17 MPG, when I start noticing that I'm only getting 15PMG, something is wrong. Time to change the plugs and wires, get a tune-up or whatever.

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Happy Wheelin'
Ray L.
97 XLT 4X4 4.0L SOHC
Dead Link Removed

[This message has been edited by Ray Lobato (edited 04-18-2000).]

 

[Hank]

Hello all,

Let me add one additional suggestion that I have not heard mentioned yet and I stumbled on by accident. For Christmas I asked Santa to go to AutoZone for the Bosch plugs and Splitfire wires. However Santa, my wife, got a little confused and bought me the Splitfire plugs and AutoZone wires. Bless her heart, she tried..

Anyway just for kicks, and after reading several posts about various wires, I pulled out my ohm meter and recorded the resistance between the old wires I was pulling off (70k) and the new wires. Surprisingly two of the new wires had higher resistance than their original counterparts. Noting which wires were suspect, some were 5 ohms higher than their original, I installed all the new wires on the truck and ran it for a bit. I then pulled the suspect new wires and replaced them with the original wires and that is when I really noticed the differance. Since the AutoZone wires have a lifetime warranty I went back with the whole set, my ohm meter and my notes. Since one set had to go back as defective anyway they let me test and pick the lowest resistance of each batch. Now I REALLY notice a differance.

Don't forget the boot grease and anti-seize on the plug threads. You'll thank youself a the next tune-up

Hope this helps.

hg



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'91 EB, 4dr, 2wd
www.grimmick.com
hank@grimmick.com

 

[Xplor]

Which wires are the best??...The splitfires or the Jacobs?...the Jacobs were quite pricey!...does it matter or difference in performance?. Saw those wires in performance products mag.