Hot Rods was any of it true?

I was given a lawn mower that would not start that had a new fancy high tech plug in it,put a used regular plug in it and it fired right up.

 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2090447912000883

Highly scientific spark plug testing

 

Lets see.. 8 cylinders X 4 electrodes X 4 cycles + 4 wheels minus 6 degrees BTDC +28 degrees dwell angle...
I think it works out to about 66 more horsepower.

 

The plug body and grounds are still steel. That pretty much has to be.

Four of them quadruples the service life of the steel portion of the plug.

The center electrode is an exotic metal, like Platinum, or Iridium, which will out last the steel.

These were solely designed to push out the service intervals of wear items, to match other major components.

Modern cars, in many cases, don't require any major service for 100,000 miles, with oil changes at 10k miles.

Our cars often never made it anywhere near 100,000 miles, at-least not without a new engine.

 

Kinda hard to believe someone that can’t count to 4. Check example C



Bones

 

I disagree, the amount of voltage it takes to fire a plug is dependent on gap size, cylinder pressure ect. If anything a bigger electrode would be a better conductor as in less resistance. The reason it takes more to fire an old plug is the wear on electrodes increases the gap. Multiple ground electrode plugs still only spark to one electrode at a time. As gimpy said just increased life.


Sent from my iPhone using H.A.M.B.

 

There's a very nice chapter about ignition systems in the book "Four stroke performance tuning" by A. graham Bell. It's been years since I read it, but you may find a more elaborate explaination in there. English isn't my first language, so I can't quite explain it all as well as I'd like to.

I do agree spark gap, cylinder pressure etc. has a bigger impact on voltage requirement, but electrode shape etc. is also important.

 

Don't forget there is a gap inside the resistor plugs.
If a better spark plug could be built I would think Smokey would have figured it out.
If you want more power, "J" cut your ground electrode and use non-resistor plugs...
J cut: take your Dremel and cut back the ground electrode to the middle of the center electrode.

 

Surface gap plugs were first used on 2 stroke outboard motors to get over the fouling problem. They were used with capacitor discharge ignition. Don't know why they never caught on, they seemed like a good idea.

 

Side-gapping and timing the spark plug once you know where the spark needs to be.

Multi-gap is crap.

 

Strangely enough E3 is currently the official spark plug of the NHRA, just a new take on a split fire. Not sure if they really use them or not but fuel cars replace the plug every run so I'm sure it wouldn't matter.

 

Ain't marketing wonderful? Sponsorship is all about the money...not so much about the product.

 

I wonder how many race teams sponsored by an oil company have been given a bunch of money, a pack of stickers and a pallet of empty oil cans and bottles to fill with whatever oil they actually want to use. So as Squirrel said, it's all about the money.

 

Good ole copper plugs are my choice for anything these days. Platinum plugs kill power in all my tries with that crap. Only fancy plug that works is the Iridium in most of the new stuff. I tried some of that fancy plug junk 20 years ago in my cars, instantly lost power, put the motorcraft/champion/ or delcos in and back to its fine running self. I agree most of that crap for plugs was a bunch of marketing to make people spend money.

Think about it this way. A part that cost 25 cents to make retailing for over 10 bucks, and minimum order is normally 4....... 39 bucks profit every sale.... Its just like the old tonic guy selling in town square.... just on a larger basis.

 

One of my friends collects spark plugs made in the teens and 1920s. They tried everything imaginable back then but its all gimmicks. Why do you think most spark plugs continue to have just one electrode? (its because it works best, no gimmick needed)

 

I used to index each spark plug for better fuel burn which was very popular but it was always hard to figure out how much it really made a difference.

Jimbo

 

Back in the day roundy-round racing the winner got a case of Quaker State, so everyone had a Quaker State sticker on their car. Knew a national champion SCCA guy who told me they would at least put a teaspoon in so they wouldn't be lying.