Getting sparks to the spark plugs

I'm beginning to wish his mum had had one fitted...

clive

Definate candidate for post-natal abortion :).

That was nearly new keyboard time!

Plugs are the same price as a gallon and a half of petrol, maybe cheaper at the right place.

You need to lift the bonnet when it's dark, and look for sparks. Try changing the dizzy cap, that could be the route of all evils (I assume these engines still have a cap and arm, not one of those coil pack weird things). Halfords 8mm leads seem pretty OK to me, but then, Champion copper ones work just fine too on my cars, and so they should :)

Right. Under load is when you're driving the car, "under load". It's very different to when it's warm, ffs.

It seems like they may be worn out :-(

Yeah, last time it cost me £61.10 and they said nothing was wrong with my car :-( That's why I'm reluctant, I would've been happier if they said they didn't know what was wrong. It seems that I've got more chance than those mechanics and it doesn't cost anything. They did an electronic diagnosis thing, the place where I normally go didn't have the equipment.

No, I got Bosch leads and my previous ones were genuine FIAT ones, but neither of them seemed to work properly. With performance ones there will hopefully be a lower chance of the sparks jumping out of the leads. The performance ones have a lot more shielding, and they're also supposed to improve the performance on my car.

I have thought about that, but I wouldn't have thought it would make the sparks jump.

So there's a chance that there is, in fact, sod all wrong with you car then?

As long as the conductive core is capable of carrying the charge from the coil without too high a loss, then I can't see a difference. You're not running plasma ignition, FFS. And as long as the outer insulator is insulating as well, then the leads should be OK. The various different lead types are part snake oil, and part useful in certain applications. The main advantage of many "performance leads" is purely that the shielding doesn't break down as quickly when exposed to heat as other types. I'm talking the sort of heat found next to an exhaust manifold, BTW, not the heat of a pleasant sunny day.

If you have sparks arcing around under your bonnet, then something is wrong. Are the leads fitted properly? Did your dad tell you to take the rubber boots off for some moronic reason? Are you covering them in soapy water? Are the cap and coil OK, or do they have fractures or other faults?

What I can't understand is why he paid for a diagnostic test if the sparks supposedly leaping all over the place are that obvious...

It's difficult to believe that anyone could be this fuckwitted.

LOL - best response ever !!!!!!!! I take my dutch cap off to you !!!!!

It's not that tricky. Trust me, I've had dealings with a Jeep Wrangler owner, and a friend's mum's mk3 Cav recently. The Jeep owner scares me, to put it mildly.

Assuming you're not a troll...

Are you sure the leads you got were the correct ones for that car/engine?

My brother has one like yours, and IIRC, it uses a wasted spark, which mean the sparks are bigger. If you've got leads for an old fashioned engine, they may not be able to cope.

Pete.

Could you explain that, please. I fail to see how a 'wasted spark' system produces bigger sparks.

Rather than having to just produce one spark, it has to produce two instead, one at TDC ignition on one piston, and one at, er, some other point.

The HT system on my mondeo reaches a _much_ higher voltage than an old fashioned coil/points system. It's such a problem that to stop a misfire on the 2 litre engine, you've got to take the spark plug gaps down. There is a tendency for No 1 cylinder (gearbox end) to produce such a high voltage that the plug leads will break down (leading to arcing and misfiring, just like the troll/numpty/victim starting this thread) rather than spark.

If you take the plug gap from 1.3 to 1.0mm, and replace the leads with OEM leads (*NOT* SnakeOil Brand(tm)), the problem should be solved.

Pete.

car/engine?

Cos they are wasted like me. Mebbe they save themselves up for a useable spark? meanwhile the wiring looks like a scene out of Matrix with writhing blue lightning tracks everywhere until the spark plug decides it needs juice and we cut to a scene from that film about fastish ricers, what was it? Fast and Furious? mebbe thats whats up with Peters car - ideas above its station. Put a NOX badge on the back of it that will cure it. A perspex bonnet will do wonders too - your plugs leads will look awesome at night.

This bit I understand. It's the price you pay for only having 2 coil packs rather than the more optimal 4. But that's cost cutting for you.

That's not really a symptom of a wasted spark system, more what happens when you use coil packs triggered by the ECU rather than a dizzy. The same problems would occur if you had 4 coil packs, too.

Well, I wouldn't use OEM on a cost basis, but he'd be fine with Champion / Bosch off the shelf from Halfrauds.

The message from Pete Smith contains these words:

That's a bit of a non-sequitur.

LOL. The other point is exactly one crankshaft rotation later, of course.

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Pete Smith saying something like:

Of course; that's because it's an electronic ign system. Wasted spark/electronic ign has been in common use on motorcycles for decades and reached a high degree of reliability many years ago, even under the adverse conditions to be found on motorcyle engines.

Even using plain good quality HT lead, you can expect no arcing from lead to exposed metal bits, provided the plug caps and rubber boots are in good order.

All of which makes me even surer the OP is a troll, or the trouble is with the sparks in his head.