motoracer

email on July 28th

E3 sales/tech support,

I am writing to give my experience with E3 spark plugs on my 98 corvette.
The corvette has about 195K mile and runs great. Gets 28 to 30 miles on the highway, so engine is solid.
Engine internal are stock and were never touched. Mods include cold air intake and long tube headers.

I had NGK Iridium plugs on the car and it had been 30K mile so I decided to change them. Note that they were running fine.
So I put in your E3 plugs. Engine seemed to run smoother. No other work was done to engine or engine components.
I flushed brake fluid after replacing plugs since I had a track day scheduled for the weekend.
I installed the plugs my self and have been doing normal maintenance on my car/cars for about 17 years now.
Then about 500 miles later I started to notice a miss at idle every now and then, but car ran well when driving.
Then at about 700 miles after plug install, the car was also missing during accelerating from less than 1500 RPM.
Car ran fine above 1500 RPM and fine below unless I tried to accelerate. But I do a bit for highway driving so it was annoying.

I have removed the E3 plugs and installed some some NGK Platinum plugs and car runs same as with E3, but with no missing problem.

I can not find receipt or I would return the E3 for refund.
I inspected the E3 plugs when they were removed and plugs visually looked fine.

Is this missing a common problem?
Is my car too modified with cold air intake and long tube exhaust?
Did I get a bad set of plugs?

Nizam

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UPDATE email July 28th from E3 company

Dear Nizam,


The gentleman you need to speak with is out of the office until next Monday. I would like to speak with him concerning your issue and then get back with you. It is unusual to have the missing problem you’ve identified.


Again, if it is not a problem, I would like to wait until next week to help you with this situation.

Thanks,

Steve Joiner

________________________________________ __________________________
UPDATE Aug 8th no other response from E3 company.

motoracer

I will post their reply if they send one.

Has anyone else used these plugs?
And if so what are your results?

Researching further, seems maybe my alternator could be having problems at low RPM, ie not producing enough power for the plug.
But stock plugs are not missing and were not missing...

2000c500hp

I had them in my vette and had to take them out. When I had the motor built by TPIS they said the plugs ran way to hot and caused pre-detonation!

bdiddo

good info. I was considering getting a set. i will pass

itzza427

At around 55k I put in fresh Iridiums (delco) and have been thrilled with the results!!It was used in a dyno display and put out great #s stock (with only a blackwing intake and Corsa touring catback. The lowest hp was 323.5 and the highest(12 pulls later)was 338.92 rwhp.(The ecm Learned that it was going to run wot and kept adjusting wot air/fuel,gaining hp and tq almost every pull)

motoracer

ttt

Blue 92

I had the same symptoms. I found this, cleaned it up and was good as new. I'd check all your plug wires if you haven't already.

motoracer

Thanks for the reply.

My plug wires have about 30K on them. When I replaced them I also put the di-electric grease on the connections.

Bill Curlee

You would be amazed at how many people have Spark Plug Wire issues and replace thousands of dollars worth of perfectly good parts to get the problem solved.

BC

Blue 92

How much and where? If you have a loose fitting plug or coil connector the grease could act as an insulator and cause a problem.

02silververt

and have you heard back from them yet Nizam?

Jim

Today's problem is..

We installed these plugs at the request of a customer at my shop in Plano into a Toyota X-Runner, he ran them for about 1000 miles before he started getting random misfires while accelerating, but would go away during cruise under light load. After replacing with a fresh set of NGK, the problem went away and has stayed away. My opinion is the E3 plugs are junk.

K RIPPER

Changed plugs recently,decided to try one of the new "special" plugs, it seems everybody is trying to reinvent the wheel, I did not try the E3 plugs but I think my conclusion applys.To make their plugs stand out and make you want to buythey must be different and theres not too much you can do to a plug, so they jump on the ground strap bandwagon. In my case I tried bosche fusion they have four ground straps running up alongside the porcelain insulator, the E3's and halo plugs also have unique grounds and they all have one thing in common there is more metal adjacent to the porcelain insulator and that is where the problem lies.In my case the spark was jumping from the center electrode down the porcelain insulator to ground as evidenced by carbon tracking and poor performance. These other plugs also encapsulate the porcelain insulator giving the high voltage spark another option if the spark finds it easier to run along(sideways) to ground thats where it will go. The conventional plug has a small ground strap and comes closest in the area of the center electrode. Thats where the spark is going to go, the path of least resistance.One more thing, the conventional plug has all the components exposed to the combustion chamber process so any carbon deposits are burned off, the other plugs are somewhat encapsulated giving a ideal enviorment for carbon tracking.I have read another post where to combat this problem they (plug mfg.) will give you a plug that is one or two heat ranges hotter than is recommended so in theory the hotter plug will nmot let.this happen (carbon tracking) but then another problem arises detonation which in my opinon is much more harmful than a carbon tracked plug that has occasional misfire.These plugs may have had a place or might have been helpful when we were using points ignition but with the world class ignition system we are fortunate enough to have on our corvettes these "special" plugs are of no use to us.NO new automobiles come equipped with any of these plugs think about that.

Chevy Guy

Take spark plugs, wrap them in hype and a carnival atmosphere and you get these E3 pieces of garbage.

Unless you have some very very serious compression or wild mixtures, plugs and even coils arent going to get you squat.

motoracer

I have not had any reply from E3. They are ignoring their problems, which is unfortunate. The plugs did seem to work great for about 400 miles. Must be bad quality control, or who knows...

I have put about 2K on the car since the install of the NGK Platinum plugs and the car is still running great.

BoiseVette

Sorry to hear about your misfortune with E3. At the time I was looking to replacing my plugs, I found dozens of such stories about E3, similar to yours on Google. You might want to start a new thread entitled "WARNING - E3 spark plugs are pure garbage." Best of luck with their CS, but even if they did replace your plugs, would you really want to put that miserable **** back into your vette? At least you're getting the word out so none of the rest of us will buy this trash. Sorry it happened to you bro. Good luck.

N4cer

Why would you be running these instead of the tried and proven NGK?

bmacZO6

A very good marketing campaign is getting a lot of people to buy these lousy plugs.

VetteTech81

My thoughts exactly, or a boot not properly seated... but the plugs may just be cheap junk... I'd stay with delco iridiums ect... unless there is a need to go with something different..

lionelhutz

Snake oil is snake oil, no matter what the packaging.

This is off topic but I hope a tuner can comment on this. As far as I know, the C5 uses narrow band O2 sensors. This means it has no ability to measure the AFR at WOT so it can not adjust the AFR at WOT. I just haven't worked on a C5 specifically but the injection systems I have worked on with narrow band O2 sensors all had fixed tables for WOT operation.

Peter