Anyone played with Spark dwell times?

[Tordne]

I've been reading a few interesting things about the Spark Dwell tables and people increasing the values to produce a more powerful spark.

It is probably common for us to change the plug wires to after market kits. I personally have Taylor ThunderVolt 10.4mm wires.

From talking to Jesse (Wait4Me Performance) while he was in NZ a while ago he mentioned that this is not necessarily a good thing to do as the stock wires are about the best you can get, and obviously tuned for the stock dwell.

I guess my interest is has anyone increased the Spark Dwell table, by how much and did the coils take it/last?

[wait4me]

The coil starves for charge at higher rpms with aftermarket less resistance wires, but has a stronger charge at lower rpms.

With stock wires and the stock coil dwell settings the spark energy is the same from low rpms to high. Due to the amount of energy still in reserve for the next event.

Same example goes for the 98-00 vortec computers. The limiter is actually caused from invalid spark dwell. Not an actual speed limiter in the pcm.

If you can measure charge voltages and spark intesity across the gap on a spark plug with after market and stock wires, you will see what the need is to be modifiying the dwell.

[wait4me]

On another note though, if you are stock, you wont see a power gain, it just allows you to run a Larger spark Electrode gap. Then you would see the gain.

[SSpdDmon]

So Jesse, I'm running TR55's @ the factory .055 gap and stock wires. Should I just leave well enough alone?

[Tordne]

I have TR6 plugs. So are you saying the increasing the gap you'd see a gain even if stock?

I recall you mentioning something about me running the 10.4 mm wires and that changing the effect of the dwell times etc

[joecar]

When you increase spark gap, it takes more voltage to jump thw wider gap...

so the spark voltage will be a little higher.

[joecar]

What the spiral wound wires do is contain all the EM energy within the spiral core, so no energy is lost as EMI, so all the energy is available for pushing spark (rather than also inducing currents in surrounding metallic objects).

[wait4me]

What the spiral wound wires do is contain all the EM energy within the spiral core, so no energy is lost as EMI, so all the energy is available for pushing spark (rather than also inducing currents in surrounding metallic objects).

My point is though, that with the stock dwell settings, they are set up expecting a 700ish ohm resistance, so they dont dump the reserve voltage as fast. With a wire that has 125 ohms, the voltage gets cleared out faster from the coil so it has to take longer to fill that lost voltage back in. Hence why it starves on the top end of the rpms and has stronger on the low rpms range.

[Redline Motorsports]

I guess the moral of the story is keep the stock wires on as they get the job done pretty good!

Howard

[wait4me]

I guess the moral of the story is keep the stock wires on as they get the job done pretty good!

Howard

I have yet to see proof of bigger wires making more power at WOT