Spark Plug confirmation in July Hot Rod

[bezhawk]

My experience has been the opposite. With good fine wire platinum plugs, and good non porous porclin insulators. My Bosch plugs could be immersed in gas, dried off and they would be perfectly fine.

[hausdok]

Don't know why it was, but back in the early 70's when I was working on Toyotas I would see pretty poor performance from Champions vs. the original Nippondenso plugs. A customer might bring in a car with Champion plugs and be complaining about a misfire. If I found it equipped with Champion plugs, the first thing I'd do was swap out the Champion plugs for the Nippondenso plugs and fire up the engine to see if it would make a difference. Nearly every time the engine would smooth right out and run great; if it didn't, an ohmmeter would usually show me that the carbon-centered plug wires had way too much resistance and I'd replace those - miss cured most of the time.

As I said above, I have no idea why the Champions didn't perform well - beats lehell out of me. I compared the plugs - and electrode length, diameter, ceramic and thread depth were all seemingly identical but those Toyota engines seemed to prefer the Nippondenso plugs.

[TWChamp]

I saw some plugs have an internal spark gap, so they would show infinite ohms.

I've had good luck getting wet fouled plugs to fire by holding the plug wire 1/4" away from the plug until it heats up, or by heating the center electrode with a propane torch.

[shifter4]

I'd like to see a really objective blind test of this. Plug manufactures , etc , out of the mix .
I have cleaned oily ,and/or gassy plugs as needed, and they'll certainly fire .
I use Starting Fluid sprayed on and let to drip off , 2-3 times ,and after a thorough dry , stick them in .
If the engine , or carb , that fouled them in the first place is the real problem , then of course it
is likely not to work well . If the basics are there , and systems are AOK , I think they'll do .

[Dwain G.]

When wet gas soaks in to the ceramic the additives in some gasoline make the ceramic become conductive.
I always remember Ferman, our parts man, and his oft repeated sales pitch for Lodge spark plugs. "The British make the finest bone china in the world........"

[studegary]

When wet gas soaks in to the ceramic the additives in some gasoline make the ceramic become conductive.
........"

My thinking coincides with Dwain's. I believe that the problem with saturated spark plugs was worse with leaded gasoline. The lead remained as a conductor in the insulator.

[kxet]

I take wet plugs {gas soaked) and heat them up with a propane torch until gas burns out. Only time I ever had real problem was with hot tanked ( left in heads during cleaning) plugs. They look new but won't work.

[lark55]

It might be interesting to use one of the old champion spark plug testers and compare various plugs that were soaked in gas by testing them. I just happened to read a section in the Avanti factory manual recently where they use one of those testers on cleaned plugs to verify if they were good or not.