I figured I would ask my fellow camaro enthusiasts this question. I may have been thinking too technical and too hard but I just want a second opinion on some advice I had given a good friend of mine. I went to Nashville Auto Diesel College and I am no expert by any means. I tend to think about a problem too much when it occurs. A friend of mine has a stock 89 dodge 1/2 ton truck that he decided to replace the coil, wires, with MSD and replaced the plugs with a set of E3 plugs. Once he had finished replacing, he had a terrible miss. I went back over his work per say because he isnt very mechanically inclined at all, and all the wires and coil connections were tight and in order. He replaced the stock stuff with the higher voltage coil and the 8.5 wires, but still had a cheaper advanced auto cap and rotor. My suggestion was to get a performance cap and rotor also and it may take care of his miss. I figured it could be possible that when the higher voltage was too much for the cheaper cap. I just wanted to get a second opinion or maybe even some more advice.

 

If the voltage is increased more stress results on insulation, which could lead to crossfires/mis fires. So going to a better cap & rotor may help. Also with high power ignition there is the problem of induced voltage from one wire to the one next to it. Better insulation will not help in this case but proper wire spacing and routing will. There is also a possibility that some of the new parts including plugs could be bad or improperly gapped. All the hype about multiple plug electrodes is just that, hype. Electricity always follows the path of least resistance and it is almost impossible for all electrodes and gaps to be exactly equal.

 

E3 plugs are a weird configured gapless type plug. Have him dump the E3's and buy some good plugs. I belong to a club where a number of members received some free E3 plugs for testing. The large majority of them had either no better response, or worse response with harder starting and crappy running issues. The major consensus....they're crap! Results were too "hit & miss", with more miss than hit.

 

Buy a plug wire puller with the spark going to ground, and not down your arm, you do not have that protection of that special tool.

Now you pull one plug wire at a time. This will cause a miss or clean up the miss so as to pinpoint the cylinder that has a broken/cracked plug, a wire grounding before reaching the plug, etc.

 

Well everyone, thanx for all the help. I am happy to say that we fixed the truck. He left the MSD coil on but replaced the cap, rotor, and wires with Mopar performance stuff and the E3 plugs with the factory ones. After narrowing the problem down it ended up being the E3 plugs. Someone had mentioned tat a few comments up and it got me wondering, so I checked and that ended up being the whole problem. Me being the weirdo I am, I still suggested he chenge the MSD after market stuff he has with the factory performance stuff. Ive always had better luck with the factory replacement. It works and runs great now. Has a little bit of a hesitation on take off but not too noticeable, which I think thats an whole different problem aside from the ignition. I'm leaning towards tranny there but thats for another day. Again thanx for the advice and help. It all was useful and greatly appreciated.

 

Glad you got it figured out. I've heard so many bad things first-hand about the E3 plugs, and not much good. It makes me wonder what cars the manufacturer is testing their plugs on where they don't get the same bad results? But wait, their advertising says their plugs are better, so they must be!