Which plugs are best for performance?

Copper core plugs coated with nickel, platinum or iridium?

  • Total voters
    14
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That one bad Champion I got had some kind of internal flaw that let it discharge internally. Damnedest thing. Spark would jump from threaded end back to engine, but nothing at the gap.
 
Hmmm. Lot of interesting posts. Ive been running the ngk in my 340 for the last 4 years with no issues. Maybe ill stay with em
 
stroked340 said:
You want to know what works..go to the track and see what people who actually race and KNOW how to tune and know what plugs work.
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Excellent advice for the track. Is this guy on the street?
 
All,

What about correct heat ranges? I'm going to have a 10.2-1 Compression motor and plan on using 92/93 octane. Should I run a colder plug with a 160 deg thermostat? I have RN12YC's on the shelf.

Thanks,
Marion
 
mario03srt said:
All,

What about correct heat ranges? I'm going to have a 10.2-1 Compression motor and plan on using 92/93 octane. Should I run a colder plug with a 160 deg thermostat? I have RN12YC's on the shelf.

Thanks,
Marion
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what heads ? and why a 160 ts ?
 
I got 4 Ngk-8 in one side of the engine and 4 champion RC9y in the other side. Car ran is faster every...
 
Allways!
Best plug is the fastest plug!
(Next guy)
NO! Best plug is longest lasting!
(Next guy)
NO! Best plug is....

As far as heat range goes, stock to 1 cooler for most Street and street strip rides. Track testing (or dyno) will show what's fastest and regular driving should be tested as well.

Most cars will not go 3 steps cooler.
Race rides... well... what ever works best. When the times go down, your doing it right.
 
70aarcuda said:
I got 4 Ngk-8 in one side of the engine and 4 champion RC9y in the other side. Car ran is faster every...
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When you stand on the gas, which side is faster the NGK side or the Champion side.
Not sure? Here's how to tell. Let go of the steering wheel & stand on the gas. If you swerve to the left, the spark plugs on the right bank are faster. If you swerve to the right, the left side is faster.
:) .:lol: :rofl:
 
IfItsGotWheels said:
When you stand on the gas, which side is faster the NGK side or the Champion side.
Not sure? Here's how to tell. Let go of the steering wheel & stand on the gas. If you swerve to the left, the spark plugs on the right bank are faster. If you swerve to the right, the left side is faster.
:) .:lol: :rofl:
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:rofl:
 
My old 77 B van always ran best with champions, but it did burn so much oil that I had to change them every 3k with the oil.
 
I can speak to longevity.
My RN12YCs have been in my 367 since 1999.
I regapped them in 2004. Currently, the total is over 100,000 miles. I bought a new set in around 2010,but they are still in the tune-up kit I keep in the trunk, where also are; all manner of carb and dizzy parts, as well as the obligatory spare ballast,a flashlight, a knife, zip-ties,assorted wire connectors,fuses, some tools,and a bagged half roll of azzwhipe.
If you have a decent tune,and a decent coil, you can fire just about anything, I guess.
These plugs have made just one 1/4 mile pass, and just four 1/8 mile passes, and hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of 2 and 3 gear runs with the tach pegged to between 7000 and 7200. They have driven several thousands of hiway miles on trips, and the rest was just bombing around and having fun, between May long-weekend and September Long. Oh,and probably many,many hours of idling and low-speed messing around. And no CDI,either.
I couldn't give a hoot about what conducts better, as it pertains to plugs.
I worked in a bike shop for something like two decades, and have seen tons of bad NGKs ,many,right out of the box. Some just flat quit under power, and some would not recover from being flooded, even tho brand new a couple of hours prior. I'm in no way ragging on them, cuz I also installed thousands that never had a problem.
I've also seen some of the crappiest coils ever produced that would look for any old excuse to quit firing.
Get a good coil, and it doesn't care what plug is on the other end of the wire.
 
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I feel champions have gone down in quality over the years but I still use them. autolites has been a steady eddy for me ...and yes copper! change often!
 
I took a more scientific approach to this question a few years back. I compared the primary resistance in ohms of new 4 each AC, Champion, Autolite, and NGKs all same application for a 340. Resistance values will give you an idea of the consistency and spark energy going to the cylinders. Champions were the highest resistance, AC next, then autolite finally NGK. Champions varied all over the place between 10 Kohm up to 20 Kohms. AC were lower on average but still in the 10 +Kohm range, autolites were between 5 and 10 Kohm. NGKs were consistently very close to 5Kohms +/- 500 ohms. Guess which plugs I recommend ?
 
66dartgt said:
I took a more scientific approach to this question a few years back. I compared the primary resistance in ohms of new 4 each AC, Champion, Autolite, and NGKs all same application for a 340. Resistance values will give you an idea of the consistency and spark energy going to the cylinders. Champions were the highest resistance, AC next, then autolite finally NGK. Champions varied all over the place between 10 Kohm up to 20 Kohms. AC were lower on average but still in the 10 +Kohm range, autolites were between 5 and 10 Kohm. NGKs were consistently very close to 5Kohms +/- 500 ohms. Guess which plugs I recommend ?
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I'm not an electrical genius, but that measurement, in my limited pea-brain means nothing. Any good coil will drive thru that like it wasn't even there. In fact it may actually drive the coil into generating a few more volts, and that would only increase the intensity of the spark kernal, just as the rotor gap does. I mean put an ohmmeter across that rotor-gap and see if you can measure it. I bet it reads open circuit. And yet the spark gets across it somehow,lol.
>I'm not saying your test is somehow invalid, cuz it does tell us a little bit about the plug. And on snowmobiles which have notoriously marginal coils,( unlike outboard marine engines, that can be used to weld with),or other small engines, I install NGKs only, cuz they flat-out work, and flat-out work longer.In metric motorcycles, they are also the plugs of choice, cuz again, the coils are marginal. And when it comes to non-Marine apps and CDI coils, NGKs pretty much have to go in.
>A real coil will fire any old plug, under just about any old conditions, short of being shorted. I occasionally wonder how big the gaps are getting to be on my 100,000 mile, 16 year old RN12YCs.
But hey, it starts, runs and smokes the tires to 7000 in two,sometimes 3 gears, so......what more could I want? lol
 
apply the same theory to older plugs of varying brands. Would be interesting to know if they get closer to short or open when they get more worn.
 
V=I*R

I did check some champions of the same type that were old - used, Ohm readings were all high in the 15 to 20 Kohm range- that's what lead me to checking and comparing new ones. Less resistance and consistent are good things when it comes to electron flow. When i put in the ngk's the car that had the champions - it starts faster and has a more even idle character

Any plug will work, but I think ngk's are likely to work better. IMO.
 
Hey, I don't get how that electrical power ever gets to the plug in the first place, since it has no ground and the rotor has long ago moved on to the next tower, there is no longer any push. Some things I understand as; it just works, but not exactly how, and I'm ok with that. Like why doesn't the spark jump right back to the rotor, when it figures out there is no ground on the other end?
See what I want to know is this; If you take the plug wire off the plug and lay it on the block, there is about an inch of boot between the end of the wire and the block,right?. Then, on a running engine,along comes the rotor, and the spark still jumps to the terminal in the cap, and flys out the other end, and jumps that humongous gap, so; why doesn't it take the path of least resistance and just jump to the next nearest tower and run up to a properly installed plug.I mean the towers are about half that distance apart,right? It's magic in my mind. Or why does it jump out of the wire at all? It's got a 1 inch jump to ground at the boot-end and a half inch or more in the cap; so why does it jump at all? Why doesn't it just stay trapped in the wire? More magic to me. See, if you make a circuit from a battery to a lightbulb,it lights up. But if you then disconnect both ends of one wire, is there still electricity trapped in the wire? No? Why not? There's electricity trapped in the battery..There's electricity trapped in a lot of stuff.
I wonder if there isn't a lot more to electricity than just what we have been taught,lol. I wonder about a lot of things.The whole of creation is a wonder.
 
abodyjoe said:
Never liked champions in my mopars. I run ngk or autolite
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we used to have a speed shop furnish our plugs. the champions didn`t last long in a race type hemi engine . until we went electronic. I run ngk now , seem to last longer for me.-----jfyi
 
AJ - the spark jumps across the electrode to ground on the plug. The rest of the pathway is insulated to prevent grounding. Theoretically - the less resistance at the plug - the more energy there is to make that arc at the plug.
 
What I'm saying is; if the coil can pump electrons across the rotor gap that measures infinite resistance, I don't think it cares about a few 100 or few 1000 ohms at the plug end, just before another infinite resistance gap at the plug tip.
Kindof like throwing pebbles into the ocean.

Just grab the end of that wire sometime, and see how hard a time the coil has in finding a ground through the human body.Last time I checked the human body has a lot more resistance than 500 ohms. IMO, the coil could care less about that little resistor.Well,almost any automotive coil,that is.
 
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Can't think of the current flow like as a regular circuit. This is a charge with a driving voltage that diminishes over time. It jumps the gap from the rotor tip to the terminal like lightning and then again at the spark plug tip. So in this situation a short section of resistance doesn't change the energy so much as its form (voltage and current over time). Obviously any real high resistance will be problem, just like too large of gap.

Most distributor caps now are vented to help reduce the build up of ozone and chance of cross fire.
 
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