Lets talk Spark Plug wires!!!

[Zedyone_kenobi]

I wanted to talk about spark plug wires for a while.

I had a set of Taylor wires on my car forever. They worked fine, but since then I have been through the gambit of wires and long story short, I have 5 sets I need to be rid of. How does one come across 5 sets of spark plug wires...humm... How do I tell this story without sounding like a tool. Well guess I just better come out with it.

My car started with blue taylor spiro pro wires. They worked great on the OEM dizzy. BUT I did not like the blue. So fast forward later I bought a set of OEM replacements thinking they would be black like in so many pictures I had seen. Well the NGK's wires that came in were not black, they were a nice blue. This is not what I wanted. But they were nice looking.

I measured the resistance through each of the wires.

Blue Taylor Spiro Pro cylinder #6 = 890 ohms

NGK OEM wires #6 = 6800 ohms

Well needless to say I wanted to run the Blue Taylor Plugs. However, I wanted RED wires at the time. So I ordered a set of RED Taylor Spiro Pro wires and ran those for a while.

Red Taylor Spiro Pro cylinder #6 = 810 ohms

I then later decided I really wanted to get the black wires I had originally wanted in the first place, so I splurged and got the THUNDERBOLT 8.2mm wires. I put these on and immediately did not like them. At this point I considered checking into an 12 step program, I put the red Taylor wires back on. But for reference I checked the resistance on the THUNDERBOLTS to see if the extra cost is worth it.

Black Taylor Thunderbolt 8.2 mm cylinder #6 wire = 119 ohms (this is crazy good!!)

So I was running the Red Wires, and these worked great up until I got my new L28 built and installed my Mallory Distributor. Well with the oil pump shaft clocked at 11:35 at TDC like it is suppose to be I dropped in the dizzy. It does not exactly point to number 1 like an OEM distributor does. Mallory is aware of this and they said that is just the way it is designed. Since I am not going to drop the oil pump and turn the shaft, I figured I would deal with it.

I am pointing to number one position on the Mallory cap here...notice it is off by about two places to far clockwise.

When attaching the Red Taylor Spiro Pro wires, the number 6 cylinder would not fit properly in the OEM valve cover wire mounts and is stretched TIGHT over the valve cover. Not what you really want. So I compared lengths and it seemed like number 5 was longer in the Taylor kits and I figured another set of Taylor Spiro Pro red wires would give me another number 5 wire that I could use for my number 6 cylinder.

So I ordered ANOTHER red set of Taylor Spiro Pro and long story short (no pun intended) the number 5 in this kit was not long enough!!! :stupid: Great quality control Taylor

now things were getting serious. I had about had it. So I quickly threw open my laptop and quickly ordered one of those custom sets of spark plug wires that you cut and terminate yourself! THIS would solve my problem...But here is the lesson in this story. Never Order angry or in a hurry.

In my haste, I did not notice I ordered RESISTOR style wires. This was a Taylor Spiro Pro Resistor style wire.

Taylor Spiro Pro Resistor Style Wire Universal kit #6 cylinder = 7700 ohms (this is particularly interesting as the OEM NGK's were BETTER)

So what is a guy to do who wants RED, high quality, low resistance, wires that fit in the OEM locations?

Simple he orders ANOTHER set of wires! LOLLOL

This time I went with the MSD Super wires that are customizable to whatever length you want. They are rated at 50ohms/ft, and most importantly, (I cannot stress this enough) they are red.

So long story short, sometimes quality wires are not as good as OEM, and other times, they are in fact worth every single penny.

So,

anybody want to buy some barely out of the box spark plug wires....

Top is the RED Taylor Spiro Pro

Second from tip is the THUNDERBOLT wires

Third from the top are the blue Taylor Spiro Pro wires

On the bottom are the custom Resistor style custom Taylor Spiro Pro wires

I am currently running the OEM wires on the Z (as seen in the top pic) until my new ultra low resistance wires come in

Yes I am crazy...No I am not proud of it. :paranoid:

Edited October 18, 2012 by Zedyone_kenobi

[grantf]

You have issues. I am not sure if there is professional help for this sort of wire obsession.

How much? (I could care less about color I am more interested in performance).

[Zedyone_kenobi]

Meh, I know what I want...

If that makes me crazy so be it.

But, If performance is most important then you will want the THUNDERVOLT wires...they are very nice..

I will shoot you a PM.

[ninjazombiemaster]

Performance definitely matters, but it drives me crazy that my NGK wires are blue.. I had no idea the resistance was so high, relatively speaking.. I wouldn't mind taking either the black Thundervolt or Red Taylors off your hands?

[240260280z]

logical progression.

I don't think wire resistance is a big performance spec:

Before a spark jumps, you have the serial resistance of the air gap in the plug, the air gap in the distributor, the 5kohm resistor in the plug, and the plug wire's resistance.

The air gap resistance changes to 0 ohms as the voltage increases and ionizes the gap.

The current limiting flow in the wire is

~ 25,000V/5120ohms (4.8A) for the Thunderbolt vs 25,000V/11,800ohm (2.1A) for NGK However you will have to start counting electrons and measure the flux density as the coil can not provide enough electrons to cause current limited flow.

Edited October 19, 2012 by Blue

[ninjazombiemaster]

The current limiting flow in the wire is

~ 25,000V/5120ohms (4.8A) for the Thunderbolt vs 25,000V/11,800ohm (2.1A) for NGK However you will have to start counting electrons and measure the flux density as the coil can not provide enough electrons to cause current limited flow.

Not huge, but they aren't a large cost either, and the Thunders halved the overall resistance, which has got to have a role on the overall engine dynamics, even if its subtle..

Out of curistoty, Zedyone, why didnt you like the thunders?

[Zedyone_kenobi]

Thanks for injecting some logic into my completely illogical rant blue

Ninja, I did not like the color if I recall. It is a bit, no not a bit, it is extremely ridiculous.

But all this took place over 3 years so it the spark plug wire fiasco was not nearly as crazy as it sounds...

It was fun writing it up as such though

Edited October 19, 2012 by Zedyone_kenobi

[Bonzi Lon]

I chose the blue NGK's because they matched the paint color.

Bonzi Lon

[Carl Beck]

Great Story Zedyone_kenobi - I can sympathize as I had done pretty much the same at one point or another. For the past decade or so - I've uses NISSAN's Spark Plug Wires. They fit and they are Black -

FWIW,

Carl B.

[Marty Rogan]

Great Story Zedyone_kenobi - I can sympathize as I had done pretty much the same at one point or another. For the past decade or so - I've uses NISSAN's Spark Plug Wires. They fit and they are Black -

FWIW,

Carl B.

I have relatively new Nissan wires on my car. Recently, I switched to a ZX Distributor and MSD Blaster II coil. I was wondering if the sotck wires are adequate, or should I upgrade to something else?

Marty

[TomoHawk]

Besides performance, my main concern is to keep the RF noise to a minimum, or none at all.

I'm not too crazy about what color the wires are, but why do they have to be so much longer that you think they should be, especially when the description says they (MSA brand NGK wires) are custom made for the L28 engine? For the American-made engines, the wires pretty much hug the block or head all the way to the spark plug. The MSA wires are all about 3 or 4 inches too long. I've knocked one off a few times while checking the oil or working on that side.

[hls30.com]

I use to use NGKs and paint them with silicone paint-you can mix any color you want, even black! Before I found the paint I would cover them with split silicone tubing-using RTV(silicone adhesive) to keep the covers on. NGKs are inexpensive and work well-very tought to beat for a stock or close Z.

Currently use Red Magnacores but I paint them black.

Given the same set of NGK plugs, the Magnecore wires allow more to go through the drive train, in a modified car even more so, but they are expensive-though they do not degrade, and you will never need to replace them-unless you take the car to a shop for a tune up and they don't know any better.