How to check spark plug wires.
 

My spark plug wires were so bad...
How bad were they?
They were causing the coil to burn out...I guess from being overvoltaged.
How do I check my spark plug wires, if I don't know the expected resistance value for them?
Connect a timing light to each wire(near the plug), and compare the strength and regularity of the strobe produced. If possible check a car with a quality set of spark plug wires to see how well the timing light COULD perform if the inducted signal from the spark plug wires was quality. Doing this in a darkened area like a garage with the light out, or at night would probably dramatise the differences between the light produced by the stobe on each wire. My wires could have been 5 or 10 years old, and the light produced by the stobe was irregular and about half as bright as that produced by a fresh set of high performance wires. The stobe from the old wires was so bad...that the timing light could have been misdiagnosed as malfunctioning.

How many miles?
 

How many miles on the wires and which vehicle? Was it running rough?

RH77

It was running soooo rough...
 

It was running so rough, that the dealer said it needed a valve adjustment! 94 Honda Civic, and I think the wires were replaced once. Thier resistance values were, 1 & 2 wire ~ 12K ohms, and the 3 & 4 wire ~ 8K ohms. 4K ohms seems like a large difference in resistances.

Checking plug wires
 

Question - did you check resistance on the new wires to compare to the old wires? Generally speaking isn't values to 12k ohms acceptable? If wires leak voltage to ground, the engine will get an intermittant miss. Worse cases the leaks are visible at night with the hood open. Anyhow, what are the values of resistance on your new replacement wires? Ken