[Healeys] Champions(again)

[Richard Ewald]

I am more than just a bit puzzled by this response. It does not matter if
you have a sports coil, a stock coil or a mega coil from JC Whitney they
will all only produce the amount of voltage necessary to ionize the gap of
the plug.  Period.  If it only takes 10KV to ionize the gap, that is all
that any coil will produce.  The difference between a stock coil and a high
performance coil is how long the spark will last.  A more powerful coil will
have a longer spark line on a scope.  That is the reason modern cars have
such high available voltages, the spark burns longer and therefore lowers
the emissions.  If you look at a modern car on an ignition scope, they only
take a few thousand more volts at idle to ionize the gap and start the
spark.  The difference is how long the spark lasts.  On a modern car the
burn time is much longer than on an old classic car.
Getting back to the OP, the very first tune up I ever did on an LBC was on
my sister's '67 MGB.  The parts house sold me a new brand of plug, just came
on the market.  NGK.  Two out of 4 were bad.  Took me an hour to figure that
out.  finally I put the old plugs in and it ran fine.  So I went back and
traded the No Good Kind for a set of Champions which ran fine.  Since then I
have used NGK on many cars, but they are not bullet proof either.

Rick

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 7:58 AM, Dave Porter <frogeye at porterscustom.com>wrote:

> I'll add that unless you are driving Bob Hockert's of Mike Salter's Healey,
> I would not recommend that you use platinum plugs, of any manufacturer.
> There is not enough voltage with stock OR sports coils to make them work
> efficiently.
> dave