OK, I checked for arcing the other night (again) and this time there wasn't
any. Again last night, there was no arcing. I thought this was strange
since the truck had a rough idle at the stoplights. So tonight I checked it
again and it was arcing. The difference? Tonight I checked it with the
engine warm - just after I had driven across town. Other 2 nights, I had
checked it when the engine was cold (had sat for an hour or two).
So arcing and cross-fire are more prevalent on a hot engine. I can think of
two explanations for this: 1) cold wires have less resistance and will
therefore conduct electricity better (same for distributor and plugs), and
2) the engine probably runs a little rich when it is first started cold -
the rich mixture is probably easier for the plugs to fire than a typically
lean mixture such as when the engine is hot.
Moral of the Story: If you're checking your plug wires for arcing or
cross-fire, do it with a HOT engine and do it in absolutely complete
darkness!!!!
Since my wires were arcing to the heat shields on the plugs, I decided to
pull those heat shields off and run the motor without them. Well, the
arcing has disappeared at the plugs, but there are still hundreds of
miniature blue lights up on top of the distributor cap!! I'll leave the
heat shields off and see how the truck runs tomorrow. I really don't care
if those 8.5mm Jacobs wires burn up - I'm ready to trash them anyway
You'd think from their advertising that they are indestructible
anyway.........
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 12:12:43 EDT