Your quote from above "it "puts out" what is delivered to it....never more, but most times less". That statement is incorrect...by the second law of thermodynamics, it always "puts out" less energy than what is delivered to it. A certain amount of energy is lost to heat and not used to create a spark between the center and ground electrode (which is what "it does").



10KV provides the potential to create the spark, but you will not have 10KV at the ground electrode. I never said 10KV wouldn't be enough to make a spark. And yes, you have to have current to jump the gap as the spark is a release of energy and voltage itself is not energy. Static electricity is not the same as voltage, however, it is a high voltage phenomenon. You can read about it here if you've forgotten:
http://www.amasci.com/miscon/voltage.html
If current doesn't "jump" anything, then why do Top Fuel dragsters use dual magnetos that supply 44 amps to each spark plug??? That's the output of an arc welder in each cylinder. I'll tell you why, cylinder pressures are very high with the nitromethane fuel being compressed into a near-solid form before ignition...cylinders run on the verge of hydraulic lock at full throttle. High voltage alone will not jump the gap.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RBYCC

And if you know ohms law then you know current goes down as voltage goes up...or at least it did when I started as a power engineer in 1966 !!!

I guess you're too young to remember when cars had distibutors with contact points and used an induction coil to step up the 12 volts from the battery....10KV was a lot back then !!!

Ok, so Ohms law is E=IR...a very simple equation. Now I don't know how your calculator works, but as I put larger numbers for voltage in, current has to go up...not down as you say. You might want to review this site as a refresher since you've forgotten so much at your old age:
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~vawter/Physic.../DropGain.html
You might also look at Kirchhoff's Rules to see why volatge is zero at the ground electrode.

Me too young to remember points...not hardly. I owned a '71 'Vette for 10 years. My specialty was ignitions (points or electronic) and carbs when I was in college, and my business was purely by word of mouth. I turned down more jobs than I did...I always "tweaked" things better than the factory specs resulting in the car running better than it ever had. When I build an engine, I can prime the oil pump, prime the carb, install the distributor, have the engine fire on the first revolution and be within 2 degrees of the desired timing. I think I know a thing or two about "old fashioned" distributors.

HCCI resembles the Otto (gas engine) cycle, not the diesel cycle. In fact, the HCCI engine more closely resembles the PV diagram for an Otto cycle than the spark ignition engine. And there are plenty of HCCI engines around, have been for a long time. They're called model airplane engines. Since it has been "commercially" available for many decades, I wouldn't say it's a theory/concept. As far as an HCCI engine being capable of powering a car, it makes a better model airplane engine since it doesn't have a wide range of operation. It will require a hybrid design incorporating a spark plug for certain modes of operation to be viable in a car. But GM does have a running example as we speak, so it may not be too long before it comes to market.

BTW, I had a year of Electrical Engineering while at Georgia Tech. And thanks for the tip, I prefer Mechanical Engineering anyway. But for somebody that's a power engineer, you don't seem to know much about electricity and even less about spark plugs. Maybe old age has dimmed the memory.

 

one year of post high school education and you learn nothing but how to insult others. why don't you go crawl back under that zr1 rock.

 

Actually, it was seven years, but who's counting. A quick read through your posts revealed more insults and sarcasm than my posts...pot, meet kettle. And I can't crawl under that rock, it's too crowded with you there. (I also have a '77 coupe and '99 coupe, would you like me to try one of those rocks??? )

And to get this back on topic, did you see anything technically wrong with my post???

 

Are you sure that you are really an engineer?
Based on the links that you love to post I would guess you're a grad of "GOOGLE U"

Static electricity generates a measureable voltage....cannot be denied.
Current is not neeeded to jump a gap between conductors.
A spark or arc does not always have to go to ground, it is common when a contact is opened or closed, even in your light switch.

You're dangerous with a calculator when you just put in numbers without knowing what the numbers mean.
OK "Sparky" how does one increase voltage ???
You think you can fix the I and the R and increase the E ????
Sounds simple but doesn't work that way.
Let's be basic and look at DC as in a car.
You have a 12 volt battery that is rated in amp hours and cranking current.
The 12 volts isn't high enough to "spark" much of anything, so it goes to a coil...the coil is a wire wound device around a metal core which increase the EMF.
And what does the wire coil inherently have built in????
Additional resistance !!!
More resistance equals less current !!!
Why do you think utilization devices in your house such as A/C units and electric stoves/ovens operate at 240V???
Because they consume one half the current that the same device would consume at 120V ???



WOW !!!!
You must have had your very own Sun DT-500 !!
So you can fire up an engine that you build on the first revolution ???
That comment alone confirms that you never built an engine in your life, especially a race engine.

 

i am certain i wasn't addressing the technical aspect of your post since i don't know enough education in this field. so i would stay out of it. i was addressing how you manage to get into insults on weekly bases with just about everyone.

 

My curiosity got the better of me and I just had to see why in heavens name there is still a thread on these things

BTW: the Pulstar sticker is worth 5 HP

 

that is the problem with these "cut and paste" so called engineers with no real life experience.

 

so has any one tried " Pulstar Spark Plugs" yet? i want to know the openion.

 

see other thread or do a search!!!!

 

We did extensive testing on them back in December in our climate controlled dyno. Both on a bone stock C6 & a heads/cam C6. They deffinatley work but need to be tuned for best results. They are no "swap in miracal", but they work. Do a search & see our complete test & the results. These are NOT for forced induction as they do result in a hotter, more complete burn.

 

Hey, I actually dyno'ed a set of these plugs and shot video of the whole process. I used a Chevy SB as a dyno mule and not an LS motor, but I think the results are pretty representative. You can check it out at streetmuscleaction.com if you are interested. Or here's a direct link.
Thanks
Jeff

 

Very Nice, I agree $200 would be much better spent in doing and UD pulley or porting your intake. Who knows as well how these plugs perform after you have 5-10,000 miles on them. Hell, you could probably pick up the hp shown by the Pulstars by just switching a cooler stock plug.

Only one thing is that you should have tested some other brands of plugs while you were at it, NGK V-power, split-fires, and especially an Iridium version of something.

 

I'll just echo what others have said, combustion energy that drives the piston down comes from the burning of fuel and air. That's it. Fancy sparkplugs add no energy to the combustion process. None.

 

I'm not advocating the Pulstar Plugs by any means, but I think a plug does have a lot to do with how much power you make--at least in smaller amounts. A good, hot spark--or one that last longer (say if its powered from an MSD 6AL box) will create a bigger flame kernel and aid combustion. Proof of this is where you can change out a set of six-month old plugs with a new set of the very same plugs on an engine dyno and pick up a couple horsepower.

 

Spend $200 on a set of plugs then have to spend $$$$ for a dyno tune to get results??? Most of the poor suckers that buy those plugs doesn't even know what a chassis dyno is let alone what a dyno tune is.

I think one can spend $200 on a decent CAI and get better results. I can take a Halltech Killer Bee, install it on a new Z, stablilze the fuel trims run it on a dyno and see a 12hp gain....No BS there.

I still call snake oil. A customer brought some in last year, and just for giggles I strapped his car down on the dyno for baseline testing to see if there are any gains. I ran the car three times with the stock plugs (75k miles on AC Delco plugs) then replaced the plugs with the $200 plugs and ran the car again. Tests were inconclusive, but from what I seen there wasn't any improvement over the stock used plugs whick were still in good shape. From my experience the only time a plug will gain any real power is when its replacing a plug that was misfiring. Another member here from Aluquerque NM, went to their facility and using his car on THEIR DYNO and using their plugs netted NO GAINS as well. I think I will take my $200 and go out for a nice dinner with my wife I do agree that an iridium fine wire electrode plug with a nice focused spark could make more power. And I have seen standard copper plugs generate misfire counts on a LS6, where as a fine wire electrode plug eliminated them.

 

I also was witness to some dyno pulls with these plugs on a new Challenger. No Gain. They probably would make more power than a Bosch Platinum, though... By far our shops #1 problem causing spark plug.

 

A 12 volt coil can easy make 50 times more voltage. Save the electronic's
stuff. No comment on the rest!

 

I agree just because the plug still sparks doesn't mean it's doing it's job.
But 6 months old? When how many miles? Is the story! Hotter coils need a wider gap to make a difference.
Indexing new plugs is the best thing to do to help combustion.
Old worn plugs waste gas and have weak ignition.
There is power to be had in ignition area! But not big hp like there claims!

 

The only power to be had with plugs/hotter coils is if you current ignition is malfunctioning or inadequate (our stock ignitions are very powerful for emissions reasons and do not need any help). Multi spark ignitions can aid if you have a very large cam with alot of overlap and your idle is poor, but they won't make more power.

 

Ask Bush before he gets laid off. LOL.