Cranking with plug wires removed?

The raw gas damages the catalytic converter.

How about with the gas flow stopped?!?!

Unburned gas washes the oil off the cylinders. Excess fuel can cause problems with the converter. Lack of a place for the high voltage to go can cause burn through of other components. Ignition component failure is common.

this true? If so, what could be the result.

Depends on the engine and what you DO with the wires once you remove them. If you ground them, its hard to imagine any damage. If you leave them floating in midair, the high voltage will arc somewhere else, likely inside the distributor cap (or down the coil tower on distributorless systems) which can definitely cause problems later on when the spark continues to follow the carbon track that the first spark formed. Distributor caps are particularly bad because when a carbon track forms between two adjacent terminals the two cylinders can cross-fire, leading to backfiring and other nastiness.

Thanks to all for your informative responses. Regards, Gary

Those new fangled cars nowadays are a far cry from my 1914 Ford Model T Runabout Roadster Car.

Seems to me, about twenty years ago, I read something in an auto magazine about cranking with plug wires removed.

I reccomend,,, Don't do it! cuhulin

Some electronic ignition systems can be damaged if the coil wire is not disconnected from the distributor and grounded

nate

mr158912 wrote:

ANY ignition system.

You're only a couple of coats of varnish away from arcing thru the coil windings.

Yep. That'd be why, on the rare occasions when I need to crank my car with plug wires off for whatever reason, I pull the coil wire at the distributor end and stick it on the extra threads on the back side of the little screw that holds the mounting clamp shut around the coil on my car - Perfect size, ultra-convenient location, and since it's sunk in a relatively hefty metal strap that's nut-and-bolted straight to the back side of the alternator bracket, it's even an excellent ground point

- if I didn't think I knew better, I'd think it was almost like that screw was specifically designed and placed for exactly that use :)

You can get a painful distracting arc through you if you are touching the wrong place when somebody cranks the engine with the wires off.