Well after reading into the Spoon Plug Wires and seeing they have a small resistance of .04ohms , and since im getting a degree in electronics, i wondered what my (Magnecor) plug wires would ohm out to.
http://robearracing.com/pd_magnecor_10mm.cfm --can be seen here
And the results were really surprising to me. I first mesured the far right plug wire (sry cant member what cynlinder # it is)

I used my Meterman 37XR to do this little test. And just some quick info for some people who may not understand the significance of this. The larger the number of resistane (better know as Ohm's) drop's a larger amount of Voltage. Therefore getting less amount of voltage to the spark plug. So if we had a smaller resistance we would have more voltage going to the spark plug to make a better spark. Im not gonna go into how current is affected, its alot more writing and i know Honda-tech's like to see pictures. So here we go.
Starting at the opposite end from the distrib. cap.




As you can tell the resistance gets smaller as we get smaller in actual lenght of the plug wires. 5.7k Ohms - 3.2k Ohms is WAY larger than .04Ohms. So how much power loss is there actually? There is not telling without an actual dyno between these and the Spoon Wires.
So this is just a post for people to read and maybe help understand a lil more bout their ride. Thanks for readin

 

It would be interesting to see the same test done on spoon wires, as you'll probably find they offer more resistance than the sales pitch advertises!

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by mugenracer &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">It would be interesting to see the same test done on spoon wires, as you'll probably find they offer more resistance than the sales pitch advertises!</TD></TR></TABLE>

That's exactly what I posted in his other thread.

 

This is where i got my info, i was off a bit, its .09 not .04 ohms...

http://www.inlinefour.com/higtenplugwi.html

 

thanks for the doing the test.

Do you have your stock wires to do a comparo as well?

I'll contribute to this thread when I get home in a couple of weeks, as I got a set of them nifty Spoon ground strapped wires. Although they are at least 30,000kms old now, I'm sure the results will still be somewhat interesting.

......that's if I can find my multi-meter

 

&lt;----Ran to the garage to check my NGK blues but my multimeter was dead and I don't have any batteries

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by RagingAngel &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">thanks for the doing the test.

Do you have your stock wires to do a comparo as well?

I'll contribute to this thread when I get home in a couple of weeks, as I got a set of them nifty Spoon ground strapped wires. Although they are at least 30,000kms old now, I'm sure the results will still be somewhat interesting.

......that's if I can find my multi-meter </TD></TR></TABLE>

I have my stock ones somewhere, but i too, am curious bout the comparsion. Does anyone have some fairly new Spoon wires?

 

The resistance will be there to provide RF noise suppression. Additionally, you may want to look into the resistance of the plug and air gap before getting too carried away with the impedence of a cable. I'd be interested in seeing what the relative figures between the two are.

 

ok, so i went outside and measured the resistance on my wires just now as soon as i read this.

bone stock 96 gsr with less than 1 week old oem honda wires.

(either your magnecor wires suck or my snap-on multimeter is wrong)

HONDA vs. MAGNECOR
cyl 1 - 5.0k - 5.7k
cyl 2 - 4.0k - 4.6k
cyl 3 - 3.8k - 4.2k
cyl 4 - 3.2k - 3.2k

so the honda wires have less resistance except for the shortest wire, cylinder 4. weird.

oh, and these measurements were taken in 35-40 degree weather, if it makes a difference.

 

not so bothered i've got stock ignition wires at the moment


this is something i hadn't thought about before, be nice to see comparisons between all the major HT lead manufacturers

 

I don’t believe your going to get any indication of wire performance via a simple resistance measurement. The situation is not a very straight forward one.

The short answer is that the impedance of the plasma created in the plug gap when the plug fires is likely very close to the wire impedance you’re measuring. The designers of the plug wires would want this to be the case in order to minimize back EMF from the plug. This dampening effect is critical to ensure the system functions properly.

The longer answer would actually go into what is called the characteristic impedance of the conductor. This impendence is not a single measurement but a function of frequency. The choice of dielectric, diameter and conductor determine what the characteristic impedance looks like. The designers of plug wires would want to match the impedance of he wire to the intended load (in this case a plasma).

Remember that the actual amount of current that flows through the plug gap is very small. It is maintained by an extremely high voltage. The relatively high DC resistance measurements are not detrimental to the performance of the wires. In fact (as I hinted at) a lower DC measurement might actually result in poorer performance.

Doug

 

just to add to the thread, NGK Blue
0.4-0.8 KOhm range, this is in 32F temperature.

 

I'll do the same for my 9mm Blitz wires tomorrow....not that it makes a whole load of difference to me what the resistance reading is.

 

Very interesting about the NGK Blues. Here is some more info i found that's interesting.
"Every brand of spiral conductor ignition wires will perform the function of conducting coil output to the spark plugs, but NONE, despite the claims made in advertisements and other promotional literature, will increase horsepower. Independent tests, including a test performed by Circle Track Magazine (see May, 1996 issue) in the USA, show that NO "low-resistance" ignition wires for which a horsepower increase is claimed do in fact increase horsepower - the test also included comparisons with solid metal and carbon conductor ignition wires."
This was on Howstuffworks.com
I appreciate everyones input on this. Maybe we can perform our Own Independent Test and keep posting the results.

 

I'll repeat what I hinted at earlier... measuring the DC resistance of the ignition wires is going to tell you absolutely nothing about how they will perform in the application they were designed for.

Consider the possibility that what you actually want is a high DC resistance to more effectively dampen out the noise created by the spark. Since regardless of the characteristic impedance (I spoke of earlier) it’s the DC resistance which actually consumes the noise as heat in the cable. The other attributes which make up the characteristic impedance simply minimize the pulse reflections in the cable.

Again... this is not an easy topic to analyse and I would bet that know one here has the tools available to properly assess which cables are better optimized for different engine setups.

I do not make these comments because I know what trade off's need to be made to achieve the optimum cable, I make these comments because I know what kind of analysis would need to take place to do so!

One final point about how miss guided these measurements are: A small length of regular speaker wire will have an impedance of 0.1 Ohms or less depending on the gauge. This cable would cost peanuts and could be made to handle the extremely high voltages of our ignition systems. The ignition wire manufactures do NOT use low impedance conductors in this application for a reason… and it isn’t cost.

Sorry guys... but a multimeter is simply a useless tool for this, you can put them away now.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by djtsmith007 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Very interesting about the NGK Blues. Here is some more info i found that's interesting.
"Every brand of spiral conductor ignition wires will perform the function of conducting coil output to the spark plugs, but NONE, despite the claims made in advertisements and other promotional literature, will increase horsepower. Independent tests, including a test performed by Circle Track Magazine (see May, 1996 issue) in the USA, show that NO "low-resistance" ignition wires for which a horsepower increase is claimed do in fact increase horsepower - the test also included comparisons with solid metal and carbon conductor ignition wires."
This was on Howstuffworks.com
I appreciate everyones input on this. Maybe we can perform our Own Independent Test and keep posting the results. </TD></TR></TABLE>

And from this we can see that low impedance cables do nothing to increase horse power, but I bet they do a poorer job of removing noise from the ignition system.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by BABY NSX &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I'll repeat what I hinted at earlier... measuring the DC resistance of the ignition wires is going to tell you absolutely nothing about how they will perform in the application they were designed for.

Consider the possibility that what you actually want is a high DC resistance to more effectively dampen out the noise created by the spark. Since regardless of the characteristic impedance (I spoke of earlier) it’s the DC resistance which actually consumes the noise as heat in the cable. The other attributes which make up the characteristic impedance simply minimize the pulse reflections in the cable.

Again... this is not an easy topic to analyse and I would bet that know one here has the tools available to properly assess which cables are better optimized for different engine setups.

I do not make these comments because I know what trade off's need to be made to achieve the optimum cable, I make these comments because I know what kind of analysis would need to take place to do so!

One final point about how miss guided these measurements are: A small length of regular speaker wire will have an impedance of 0.1 Ohms or less depending on the gauge. This cable would cost peanuts and could be made to handle the extremely high voltages of our ignition systems. The ignition wire manufactures do NOT use low impedance conductors in this application for a reason… and it isn’t cost.

Sorry guys... but a multimeter is simply a useless tool for this, you can put them away now.</TD></TR></TABLE>

You've made some very good points. So what approach would someone need to take to properly tackle this?

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by BABY NSX &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">And from this we can see that low impedance cables do nothing to increase horse power, but I bet they do a poorer job of removing noise from the ignition system.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Your exactly right----"EMI (electromagnetic interference)
EMI from spark plug wires can cause erroneous signals to be sent to engine management systems and other on-board electronic devices used on both racing and production vehicles in the same manner as RFI (radio frequency interference) can cause unwanted signals to be heard on a radio receiver. Engine running problems ranging from intermittent misses to a dramatic loss of power can result when engine management computers receive signals from sensors that have been altered by EMI emitted from spark plug wires. This problem is most noticeable on modern production vehicles used for commuting where virtually every function of the vehicle's drive train is managed by a computer. For many reasons, the effect of EMI on engine management computers is never predicable, and problems do become worse on production vehicles as sensors, connectors and wiring deteriorate and corrosion occurs. The problem is often exacerbated by replacing the original ignition system with a high-output system."

 

ALSO. If anybody tries to (for some reason) measure the output voltage out of a plug wire in any way.. DO NOT! It can be VERY dangerous and you can get seriously hurt. Ive seen someone get shocked by a MSD system that wasent careful, and it KNOCKED HIS A** on the ground. So safetly first people

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by djtsmith007 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
You've made some very good points. So what approach would someone need to take to properly tackle this?
</TD></TR></TABLE>

If I make the assumption that the main objective of the ignition wire is to transfer the ignition charge from the coil to the spark plug as efficiently and noise free as possible then I would start with evaluating the EMI components directly using various wire sets.

This could be done by using a near field EMI probe or a line conducted "listen" with a wide band spectrum analyser. From these tests we could observe the how effective each cable was at minimizing noise. These instruments would cost in the order of $30k-70k so it’s not likely anyone has them kicking around their garage.

As we have seen from dyno testing, the efficiency of various cables seems to have minimal effect.

Yes I do this for a living

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by BABY NSX &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">If I make the assumption that the main objective of the ignition wire is to transfer the ignition charge from the coil to the spark plug as efficiently and noise free as possible then I would start with evaluating the EMI components directly using various wire sets.

This could be done by using a near field EMI probe or a line conducted "listen" with a wide band spectrum analyser. From these tests we could observe the how effective each cable was at minimizing noise. These instruments would cost in the order of $30k-70k so it’s not likely anyone has them kicking around their garage.

As we have seen from dyno testing, the efficiency of various cables seems to have minimal effect.

Yes I do this for a living </TD></TR></TABLE>

Wow 30k-70k. Thanks for your input, maybe this will clear up some misconcieved ideas in the world of plug wires. Thanks again everyone

 

this is actually a useful, interesting thread on h-t for once, if anyone wants to send me a set of spoon wires, id be glad to throw my multi on there and post some numbers for everyone...