one thing that has always come to my mind but never bothered to ask -
Wouldn't it make sense to have the same resistance in all the wires in the set ? For the F23A1 there is a big difference in the length and thereby the resistance of the shortest and the longest cable. The resistance of the longest is twice (or more) than the shortest. IIRC it was like 7-8kohm and 13-14kohm.
The spark plug condition also tells the story. I haven't checked the cylinders but I am sure it would indicate the same thing.

So isnt it just common sense that the resistance should be about the same (atleast not twice!). Why would Honda do that ? And if it makes sense then are they any sets available for this engine that have balanced/equal resistance ? Or is it possible to selectively buy seperate or individual wires of different brands and make sure they all have more or less same resistance ?

 

..er..bad question ?

 

If it isn't broken don't fix it.
Just about every car has unequal length spark plug wires.

 

It's not DC. The spark behaves in a very strange way so the simplification of ohms-law doesn't really work.

 

thats normal for the higher resistance on the longer plug wires, it's just the way it is.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by JimBlake &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">It's not DC. The spark behaves in a very strange way so the simplification of ohms-law doesn't really work.
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Interesting comment. No type of signal(dc/ac) is spared from DC resistance in the path. Complex resitance (reactance) would be in addition to any DC resistance. So the real resistance would be more if anything but not less. That too for just absolute values. When you are comparing it doesn't matter. The relative resistances or difference would be more or less same. IMHO.


<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Eddiebx &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">it's just the way it is.</TD></TR></TABLE><TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by MooGoCow3 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Just about every car has unequal length spark plug wires.</TD></TR></TABLE>

If thats true then its sad, except for cars with DIS.

 

I don't think it's quite the same as reactance, either. The spark itself is highly non-linear, but not in the way that AC reactance behaves, either.

Resistance in the wires can limit current just for radio interference and to reduce arc damage inside the distributor cap. I guess the resistance doesn't have to be very precise for that.

 

well, i'm taking a stab in the dark here, but . . . maybe the resistance of the wires is so small compared to the resistance of the air in the gap of the spark plug that the spark has to arc through . . . maybe? lol
if that was the case, then a couple ohms in the wires wouldn't matter that much when compared to the 100's (1000's ??) of ohms across that gap in the plug

again, im just takin a wild guess here

 

An air gap doesn't act like a 'resistance' at all. Normal air takes about 30,000 volts to arc across 1 inch... so that's like 1,200 volts to arc across the 0.040" gap of a spark plug. Up until the arc starts, there really no current, so it's like infinite resistance.

But once the arc has started, it takes far less volts to keep it going. That's when the cable's resistance matters. I just don't know the rest of the details.