How well can these suckers work?

[Alvor315]

Same question, and oh ya, they don't have the 3.3 liter on their website.

http://www.pulstarplug.com/index.html

$25 a pop, good thing we don't have 8s.

Idk about you guys, but that flame front video is pretty convincing to me.

Allan

 

[rbohm]

8) when ever gas prices go up, there are all kinds of things that come out that improve fuel economy and horse power, and torque. all of them work, its just that most of them are "transfer" items. they work by transferring yout money to some one else. split fire plugs were supposed to be the hot thing when they came out, and yet no one has been able to get the same power increases that were originally indicated by the manufacturers. same with every other new plug that has come on to the market.

dont be fooled by fancy animations, and so called proof that just by switching to these $25 plugs that your cylinder pressure will somehow rise faster and higher than it did before, it wont happen.

 

[Alvor315]

Dash my dreams why don't you. :roll:

I was a bit skeptical. I wish they had published the numbers on those cars instead of just the percentages.

Allan

 

[rbohm]

Dash my dreams why don't you. :roll:

8) alright you asked for it;

1: no matter how hard you try, you wont get rich

2: you will never be president

3: the only good thing you have done in your life is fix up a six

enough? :rolflmao: :rolflmao: :rolflmao: :rolflmao: :rolflmao: :rolflmao: arty: arty: arty: arty: :nox: :nox: :nox: :nox:

 

[66 Fastback]

1,000,000 watts of power

That converts to 1340 hp. Say your car is operating at 14 volts, that is over 71,000 amps required. My little 120 hp motor and 65 amp alternator apparently would not make enough power to fire the spark plug. I'll have to hit up ol Doc Brown to upgrade my car with a flux capacitor.

I suspect there may not be the engineering to back up these claims. Ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
Doug

 

[XPC66]

1,000,000 watts of power

That converts to 1340 hp. Say your car is operating at 14 volts, that is over 71,000 amps required. My little 120 hp motor and 65 amp alternator apparently would not make enough power to fire the spark plug. I'll have to hit up ol Doc Brown to upgrade my car with a flux capacitor.

I suspect there may not be the engineering to back up these claims. Ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
Doug

Actually they state 1megawatt and the spark over 2 nanoseconds. You can do the maths .

 

[Alvor315]

:arrow: Energy is a funny thing. 1,000,000 watts over 2 nano seconds isn't very much energy. Power is energy over a time interval Watts = Joules/Seconds. So if you divide a small number like 0.002 Joules of energy, by 2 nano seconds, that's 0.000000002 seconds then you get 1,000,000 watts. Regular spark plugs are using the same amount of energy, but they claim that regular spark plugs waste a bunch in heating the the spark plug before the spark occurs, and that they spark for a longer time interval. Assuming that regular plugs don't waste energy, 0.002 joules divided by 50 watts gives 0.00004 seconds. So their claim is that if you can get all the energy into the fuel faster, your spark isn't wasted on already burnt fuel. 0.00004s is a lot longer than 0.000000002s.

In an engine, what's the difference between hundred thousands of a second, and billionths of a second?

Allan

 

[Jmonty]

Smoke & mirrors or ??? The white paper on the site has dyno results for a 'Vette and a V6 Mustang in it... of course the percentage of change is 3 or 4 percent, not the 10% claimed.

If there was more complete combustion & it started earlier then the cylinder pressures would rise higher than stock. How much greater pressure would be interesting to note.

Not a free lunch by any means but I guess it would be like having LED brake lights vs. incandesent bulbs... LEDs light faster (remember the Volvo ads when they first came out)

 

[Alvor315]

Exactly the concept.

Unfortunately I just heard from a friend that did his own dyno testing with those plugs. I can't verify his methods or that he was even telling the truth, but he said that he might have seen one hp difference between dyno runs of regular plugs and the pulse plugs.

Allan

Frankly, I think he was lying because he didn't know anything about the engine when I asked. And he's a mechanic for Toyota.

 

[StrangeRanger]

It's just a small capacitor built into each plug. It's getting all its energy from the spark plug lead, not from an external source like a CD ignition box does. That means that the max amount of energy these plugs can provide to the engine is the amount provided by the ignition system, the same as an ordinary plug. They may cook the numbers any way they choose, but the only gains you're going to see are due to either the greater efficiency of these plugs (which is doubtful) or the hotter spark provided by the capacitor (which may or may not be relevant.) The fact that the spark is hotter may or may not lead to improved combustion on any given engine.

According to their site, they don't even offer these silly things for a 4.9 Ford but a set of 8 for a 5.0 runs $200. For that money, I'd either buy a Crane Hi-6S inductive ignition or throw in a little more and buy a Hi-6 CD ignition. According to Crane I could expect a small mileage gain out of the 6S on a stock engine and small gains in both mileage and performance out of the CD on a modified engine. 10%??? Only in your dreams. :roll:

 

[Alvor315]

Technically they say nothing about energy. They aren't creating energy anywhere. They are just supplying the the same amount of energy a fraction of a second later, at a much higher rate. Eg. the difference between energy and power.

10% ya right, but even 4% increase in fuel economy, means almost an extra mile per gallon in a car that gets 24 mpg. Of course, that's if they actually work, which only the company has any proof of so far.

Allan

P.S. You can actually get the right sized plugs, you just need to be creative. Our plugs are 18mm with .460" reach, tapper seat, and 13/16 hex drive. There are plenty of other cars that use that same size plug. I found another year car that uses that same plug that they had on their site. I think it was a '72 f250 or something like that, but I'm sure if you called them you could give them the specs they need to find the right size plugs.

 

[Lazy JW]

....
In an engine, what's the difference between hundred thousands of a second, and billionths of a second? ....

Maybe quite a lot. But also maybe not for the better.

If that spark only occurs for a two-nanosecond duration, it had jolly well best have an ignitable mixture readily available or you will have a miss-fire.

High voltage doesn't build the fire, current is what gets the job done.

Way back in the good ol' days when electric fences were first being used, they operated on a relatively low voltage with high current. These had various name brands but were generically known as "Weedburners". Yup, they lit them thar weeds right on fire, Ya betcha!

Next development was to use high voltage, low current. No more fires, but they tended to short out rather easily on wet grass, weeds, etc. No joy.

Some crafty farmers in New Zealand got tired of chasing their cows back into the pasture, so they developed a fence charger that uses high current AND high voltage BUT FOR AN EXTREMELY SHORT DURATION! Result: excellent resistance to shorting out, POWERFUL shocking ability (don't ask how I know), and, most pertinent to this discussion, they DON'T LIGHT WEEDS ON FIRE!

For my money, I want a long-duration, high-current spark with just enough voltage to jump the gap (that's all you ever get anyway) just like a good TFI or HEI coil delivers.

I am currently using the EFI spark plugs in my 81 F-150 with the gaps filed back. So far, so good.
Joe

 

[66 Fastback]

it had jolly well best have an ignitable mixture readily available or you will have a miss-fire.

Exactly. One powertrain engineer makes the same argument for induction ignitions systems. He said you want a longer fatter spark to ignite off a mixture. He said the DC ignitions need multispark at idle speeds because the poor mixtures would not light off wiith one qick CD burst. If CD ignitions were all that much better, I think Detroit would have been installing them the past 30 years. (I run them on my cars to treat a symptom. They really do keep the plugs cleaner if you are jetted a bit rich)
Doug

 

[BIGREDRASA]

I'm a Doubting Thomas. Unless they run the test using properly gapped "normal" platinum plugs, then use the magics under the same temp and pressure, I tend to atribute the improvements to simply using new plugs.

Racers are commonly indexing their plugs, by using different thickness shims. This unshrouds the electrodes. One benefit I might see from multiple electrodes is that it unshrouds the electrodes. You can then gain the same benefit by "indexing" a good set of Platinum plugs.

 

[falcon fanatic]

The sparkplug is lovely in its simplicity. When was the last time you had one break and stop working? Do you really want to replace it with a piece of complex technology that's liable to break down at a critical moment? Go to the junkyard and yank a set of direct fire coils off a modern engine, hook them up to a megasquirt, and go!

 

[Anonymous]

Ahhh! Snake Oil again.

This new plug design appears to take us back to the old days of CD (Capacitive Discharge) ignition. The circuitry in the plug may eliminate some of the side effects of CD units ( still inherent in the multiple-spark systems today) but does not address their main weakness.

First, the best a plug can do is ignite the mixture and not be in the way of the flame. Well set up Kettering ignitions have been doing that for years. They worked best when gas was $.25/gal, your mixtures were fat, and the sunsets were red, but a well maintained system will still get you down the road efficiently today. The main advantage of modern electronic systems is in the maintenance of peak performance for a longer interval. Programmability is just a really neat perk.

"66 Fastback" has it correct, longer and fatter does the trick. The old CD units ("Mark 10" and its sister by Heathkit, et al) both gave smoother idles, but only if there was a problem in the first place. Their short spark durations would not ignite lean mixtures. They could jump the gap under extreme conditions but were not there long enough to do the deed. This is why IMHO the Autotronic MSD units have EPA approval, and the much simpler CD circuitry is relegated to amateur(?) Rail-Gun experiments.

I would also be tempted to believe that this Pulstar magic might get in the way of some of the magic already used by the auto manufacturers.

BIGREDRASA, IIRC the indexing of plugs is to get the body of the ground electrode out of the way of the ignited flame front so the flame moves in the direction desired (usually across the intake and ending at the exhaust valve). As near as I can tell, multiple electrodes act as a shield to increase the likelihood of ignition by calming and slowing the mixture in the vicinity of the center electrode. Think of a match shielded from the wind by a hand, or a "Hurricane Lamp". Some of the Mazda Wankel engines, which have rotor apexes zooming by the plugs, came with 4 electrode plugs. High mixture turbulence makes for a clean burn, but is hard to ignite.

 

[Anlushac11]

Reading the website reminds me of the plug wires with a capacitor in the plug wire to boost the energy like Nology wires do.

The Nology wires work but they are very expensive for a small gain.

These plugs look like all tehy have done is move the capacitor from the plug wire onto the plug itself.

I have a old 5.0L Magazine special where they did a dyno test on a IIRC 99 Mustang Cobra and picked up 8hp at some high rpm number. The wires were I think over $200 for the set at the time.

So Im guessing about $150 for maybe a 6hp increase if it was on a tuned engine.

Im betting you would see less on a non optimized stock daily driver.

Im also skeptical of the life expectancy of a capacitor on plug used in a daily driver.

 

[BIGREDRASA]

Good point. The increase in HP needs to be in a useable range for your applications. If the benefits come on at 4,000 RPM in our small sixes, I doubt you'll see any benefit in daily driving.

 

[60s Refugee]

The fuel mixture doesn't give a darn about where the spark comes from or how much hotter it might be. Take the air fuel mix, compress it, introduce some fire, presto! Ignition! Heck, diesels don't even need plugs. Those fancy plugs are not doing you any favors except using up your extra beer money. I guess they do LOOK cool though!

My ole' pappy used to say, "If it's too good to be true..then it ain't!"

Harry

 

[wallaka]

My ole' pappy used to say, "If it's too good to be true..then it ain't!"

A wise man, indeed.