I find it curious the number of posters who are so quick to nay-say pulstar plugs. Not that I give a d-mn. If you were a mechanic, or had SOME credentials other than an overinflated ego and posted a negative, well that’s one thing but you fool only yourself. There was one poster who seemed to know what he was talking about and had actually TESTED the item. AT $25 per plug I can wait, just was curious, for real factual info, something still very rare in this world.
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I would be suspicious of them. You’re not going to get more energy out of them (delivered spark) than the ignition system can put in to them. If you’ve got a chronic misfire condition due to too little juice being delivered to the plug (and the spark fails to jump the gap) you’d probably be better off fixing problems upstream (wires, coil, igniter, distributer, whatever). There’s no reason that a properly gapped plug with everything working properly upstream shouldn’t be able to properly ignite the fuel-air mix. I find their ads lacking in information – so they show a bigger burning area at a given time – but what’s the story over the full ignition and power stroke? All I can figure is that they produce a shorter but more intense spark (same – or slightly lower – total energy), but is that worth anything in the end?
Undoubtedly, the car makers will be including Pulstars in next year’s models, since they are so fabulous.
Well, actually I am a mechanic. About 35 years worth with many certifications and an aircraft powerplant license to boot.
I fully understand how spark plugs work, no matter what type of coil fires them; be it auto ign. coil or magneto.
And I’ve had a ton of oscilloscope time on this stuff to boot.
That one poster you referred to is someone with a vested interest in this scam because it’s money in his pocket.
He “seemed to know what he was talking about”? I heard a sales pitch, nothing more. This is referred to in the auto world as “dazzling them with BS”. The uninformed do get dazzled unfortunately.
This particular scam has been around about 15 or so years (memory fuzzy) and if there was one iota of truth to that plug design then those plugs, or their clones, would have been installed in every internal combustion engine made.
A OEM standard equipment plug will do the same or better than any other plug. What do plugs do? They deliver a spark to start the explosion that burns the fuel. The best plug in the world can only start that explosion. You can have a plug that does not do that job or that might do it for more miles, but you can’t have one do it better.
I have seen test results from reliable sources and they have found the exact same thing. I have seen live demos of these, and believe me they are rigged. I took a look at the plugs they were using as standard, and they certainly were not in usable condition.
Before I wrote this I did a little checking and it appears you are not a Troll or shell, so I suggest you do a little more research and to give serious respect to those like OK who have a great deal of experience and would not bad mount a good product.
Mr. Meehan is exactly correct of course.
While much is made of 60,000 volt coils, “hotter” spark plugs, and all manner of nonsense, a perfectly good plug firing in an average engine will only require about 8k volts for the spark to jump the plug gap.
OP, you don’t even have to take my word for it. Find an auto tech somewhere who will allow you to watch a running engine on an oscilloscope and have him explain those firing lines. The highest spike you will see is the actual spark jumping the plug gap and this is normally in the 7-10k volts range (dependent on engine conditions, width of the plug gap, etc.).
If one looks at a scope and sees a firing line hitting 15k volts or something like that do you know what that means? It means that the plug is trying to misfire, the wire is getting weak, gap is WAY too wide, etc.
Again, Mr. Meehan is dead on about the spark and not having one do it better.
I should have added this. If a mechanic attending a service school ever brought one of those plugs into class and claimed it would do what is claimed he would probably be booted out instantly by the instructors.
I can just hear my old aircraft instructor now if I presented him with one of these things…
OK4450 wrote:
If a mechanic attending a service school ever brought one of those plugs
into class and claimed it would do what is claimed he would probably be
booted out instantly by the instructors.
This is 100% true. In fact, in the auto mechanics school I went to, after studying how auto electrical systems work, if I tried claiming these plugs worked, all my classmates would have booted me out as well.