Spark Plug Wires

Anonymous-0

Well-known Member
Almost an item from the past, but what is the Ohm resistance of spark plug wires and do you use real wires or carbon wires? Thanks in advance. J.
 
I have been told that a magneto requires copper core wires but a distributor can use any kind. I do not know if that is true but it has seemed to work for me so far.
Zach
 
I use solid wires on any of the older field engines. It made a huge difference on several of my machines.
 
Solids on old stuff that came that way, would use carbons on newer stuff if I had any. Resistance of carbons should be 3K to 20K ohms per foot depending on who made it.
 
Solids on old stuff that came that way, would use carbons on newer stuff if I had any. Resistance of carbons should be 3K to 20K ohms per foot depending on who made it. Another option is spiral wound mag wire, conducts like a solid with RFI suppression.
 
On the older Magneto equipped tractors FOR SURE use wire core plug wires NOT carbon Core suppressor wires. Battery powered coil ignitions are more forgiving and less sensitive to the plug wires but unless you have an AM radio to worry about from RFI Id prefer to discharge alllllll the coils stored energy across the plug gap then waste it as heat in the carbon resistive suppressor plug wires.

NOTE there are some very high energy elec ignitions that recommend supressor wires however

John T
 
What is the reason behind copper core with mag systems? I have the carbon ones on my WC (didn't realize there were different types until I started to put the ends on) and it starts (handcrank) and runs fine when I keep enough fuel in it...
 
Don't know about the resistance J,but the guys at the old Oliver dealer have told me about tractors coming in with carbon core wires that would hardly pull themselves through the door. Said they just changed them to copper core and that was all it took.
 
On a tractor you want to use real wire plug wires due t the fact they get a lot of bumping around and things hits the wires etc and the carbon plug wires just do not hold up will in the conditions a tractor is used in. As for resistance a true wire plug one on the Ohms scale should read zero
 

I have been using from a set for a V-8 that places like "Autozone" sells as a "Low-Resistence", High Performance Plug wire set...

They have a Carbon Center core, tightly spiral-wound from Distributor (or Mag), to Plug..
I do solder the spiral ends to the end you put on and they seem to suppress radio interference and work well with my Mags...
I just wonder if anyone else has tried these..??

Ron..
 
i use solid on my tractors. back years ago dad ran out of gas in our old jd "a" so he walked to the house. went down the next morning to find the cows had eaten the wires off. he never missed a beat, reached in back the old truck,cut him a chunk of baling wire to use as wires and fired her up. ran as good as ever but you didnt want to get close, i took him a drink out and walked up beside the tractor and it dang near knocked me down!
 
Typically it's 1,000 ohms per foot with I believe a max of 3,000 ohms per wire. Remember though opens can occur with a slight bending of the wire. In other words too much resistance can fail a wire, but resistance alone, if good, doesn't mean the wire is good. Gerard
 

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