Jan wrote,
>Jarrid,
> Would you think that 7K ohms/foot (roughly) plug wire resistance is
>normal or high? The Packard TVR wire that I have presently on my Alpine
>are about 40 ohms/foot and they are not the solid core like the Packard
>440 wire. Rob, have you tried any other plug wire types (solid core for
>example, if you can find some).
>Jan
I would only be concerned with the 7K ohms per foot, if not all wires
have the same value more or less.
It would sound high, but most cheap wire sets have a graphite empregnated
glass core, which can have small opens particularly at the ends of the wire.
To an ohmeter, this would apear to be a rather high resistance, but to
40KV, the gap is easily jumped and the effective resistance is much lower.
Also since the wires are fairly short, and we also assume that the total
DC resistance is 21K, with 40KV available, we could still throw 2 amperes
peak current through the plug (Actual plug voltage is only 100 to 200v once
the gap is ionized), so the majority of the voltage drop would be across
the wires, which is as it is supposed to be.
As to solid core wires, along with creating RF interference, solid wires
or non-counterwound performance wires will kill most electronic ignition
systems due to very high inductive kickback voltage/currents, and the
coil temp will go up as well due to the coil secondary voltage being
limited to the plug gap voltage. The extra coil energy has got to be
dissipated somewhere.
Jarrid Gross
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