Plug wires
 

Any body need to change their plug wires and want to try these.
https://www.lubedev.com/smartgas/approach.htm

Didn't have a lot of time to look but did a quick google search and could not find anything on them. Looks interesting.

Eh, I don't see the theory for it anywhere, plus I tend to distrust that site in the slightest sense, so without theory (Which the site usually has) I'll say meh for now.

I keep meaning to do a resistance test on old wires compared to new wires, but I still haven't bought the new wires and I have no idea how old the wires in my car are so it wouldn't be a seriously definitive test.

I can't imagine that they seriously degrade as much as wire suppliers would have us believe. Wouldn't wiring in houses be constantly degrading as well and need replacing much sooner than 40+ years?

I agree. I know what the acetone did for me.:( Wish I could find some info on the wires. Even if it did 25% of what professed it be good.

People at my shop complain that any more they don't make cars to be durable, they make them to break so that you have to buy a new one...mehbe the same conspiracy theory applies here, :p

But on a serious note, I do believe plug wires will eventually go bad, but I think that's more a function of the fact that they really get juiced hard, fast, and often.

True. They are in a constant "on-off-on-off" function and this tends to be harder on electrical components than always on.

Most spark plug wires are NOT really wires! The insides have carbon and some fibers around them then the silicon. the more you move them or they are vibrated, the more the carbon can separate and resistance goes up. That's why performance wires are spiral core which as the name implies has a stainless steel wire wrapped in a spiral then several layers of silicon.

Thanks katman! I didn't know any of that at all. Guess I'll have to cut one open and take a peek one of these days.

wire core's
 

Plug wires are carbon core because they are resister wires, if they were lower resistance, like pure copper, you would hear your engine running everytime you turned on anything electronic, like your radio, that is part of why older motorcycles still used copper stranded plug wires.
it is commen for the insulation to be the first part to wear out, it gets cracks and you get arcing, that is why you can tell when you need new plug wires by when your car runs poorly in the rain, and if you look at your running engine at night, and see arcing, you need new wires.
if your house wiring was exposed to heat, oil, water and grit, you might have to replace it every few years because the insulation would degrade to much.

I changed most of my ignition components it looks like it improved my mileage a bit. I changed the spark plugs, spark plug wires, distributor cap, distributor rotor. I hate bosch stuff, my plugs and wires are now NGK, it's much better quality than bosch.

I find statements like this to be somewhat unfounded. You are approving of one manufacturer and saying everyone else builds junk. How about some tests to prove it? :D

I have no affinity to any particular brand and I'll buy either what's on sale or what I know has been tested and works the best. As for spark plugs I have no clue if the $1.50 AC Delcos are any worse than the $8 Bosch +4s when it comes to the Metro's FE. I just bought the +4s because I didn't have to worry about gapping them...and they were on sale...and they just look cool...and I can say I've got +4s in my car...:p

thats the general consensus at honda-tech.com as well.

its been dyno proven that for the money ngk is the best. the wires cost less than those from honda and so do the plugs. also its been proven that the ngk wires really are the best with exception to msd which ranked the same performance wise but costs more.

ngk plugs are $10 for 4 and the wires are $40 for the set(4). uber cheap and good quality.

Which plugs are they specifically? I'll have to see if I can find the NGK wires around then...I haven't changed those since I bought the car and I don't know how new/old the current wires are.

When you change them out if you have an Ohm meter could you see what they are? It would be interesting so see how much the resistance has changed.

i got ngk blues like 2-3 years ago. i believe i got them from nopi.com. the plugs are the standard v-power plugs that napa will give you.

You bet. I'll check the old ones and the new ones and perhaps I'll continue to test the new ones every few months.

Thanks. Yeah, I know the ones you mean now. I got the same ones at NAPA for an old Corolla I had for a short time.

from what I've read the Bosch +4 platnim plugs don't tend to work in Honda's, because they tend to work best with traditional plugs that are indexed, the Bosch +4 plugs are side gaped (correct term?) and platnim is not as good of a conductor as copper, but it will conduct longer, and under harsher conditions, a platnim plug will not foul, or wear out, so it will work "ok" for a really long time, but never work exelent.
I've had champion plugs fail more times then I can count in Japanise engines, so I tend to avoid mixing countrys, if I owned an amarican car, I would put amarican parts (unless a single part was proven to work better) and the same goes for Japanise cars, I tend to lean twards NGK for replacement parts, and for VW's we use Bosch parts.

My plug wires have about 30,000 miles on them so I borrowed a Meter and checked the resistance. The meter was set on 20K and the values were :

#1 3.70
#2 3.38
#3 2.11
#4 2.15

The longest length is about 27 inches. I know nothing about electricty or multimeter.:confused: Do I take it that the worst wire is 3700 OHMs? According to the manual I can go to 16K ohms per 40" which seem like a lot. The cars running good but info is appreciated.

Resistance increases with the length of the wire so the shortest wire should have the least resistance the longest, the most. Spark plug wires need very high resistance since they pass voltages in the tens of thousands of volts (relatively low amperage).

For your manual to suggest 16k Ohms in 40" is basically an ohms/meter reading that works out to 4,877 Ohms/ft.

All of your wires appear to be reading far less than that. If your 27" wire is the one reading 3.7k Ohms then it is 1644 Ohms/ft. All of your other wires should tally in near that number.

Ok thanks I've got it now.:D

zpiloto - I was just looking at your post again and you've had those wires in for 30,000 miles? It doesn't seem like the wires have degraded in the slightest (though I don't know what they started at).

Like I mentioned before, I've wondered if wires actually need to be replaced as often as a lot of people say (I've heard many say every year or every other tune-up). Seems like a rather large expense for a few less ohms of resistance when the vehicle can actually run fine with high-resistance wires.

From Bosch's site:

Thanks. I agree these were changed at 70k and probably did not need to. But Now that I have a handy dandy multi meter so I'll just check em every 30k or so.

Your test got me curious so I checked my wires finally. I didn't measure lengths 100% accurately - just a rough measure.

Cylinder 1: 3876 ohms/ft
Cylinder 2: 4368 ohms/ft
Cylinder 3: 4248 ohms/ft

Just realized I didn't check the coil to distributor wire...oh well.

The Haynes manual states that wire resistance should be <10kOhms/ft.

These wires are minimum 9 months old - have no idea when they were changed - Niehoff premium silicone.