my plugs are glowing...BLUE!!!
 

i've never seen this one before..

i've been noticing random misfires n' such lately. i did all the normal tuning adjustments and they're not afr or rpm/load related.

so it's dark out and i've got the hood popped and i started revving the engine a bit.. blue glow from the base of the spark plugs--the metal hex part that you slip the wrench onto.

at first i think oh yea, it's gotta be arching somewhere and that's just the reflection. i don't have any spare wires, so i just wrapped the shit out of them with a few layers of electrical tape. i'll get some wires tomorrow or the next day maybe.

off with the tb elbow so i can get a better look at things-- same shit! blue glow from the base of the plugs. alright, i grounded a wire out and ran it along the coils and plug wires and down by the spark plugs to see where it's arching from...it isn't!

so after scratching my head for a minute and having a smoke, i decided to swap out the plugs. the only new plugs i had laying around were br10eix. well, they'll have to do, even if i prefer 9's.

success!! sorta.
no more blue glow, except for a little bit randomly coming from one of the plugs.

so i don't know what in the world would cause this. perhaps a conflict with my coils? haltech control-coil-wire-plug...

fd
haltech e8
gm ls2 coils (with built-in ignitors)
-direct fire mode (not wasted leading spark)
-coil charge time @4ms
taylor 8mm spiral pro wires.

if anyone's seen something like this before, lemme know how you tackled it.
thanks!

duhhhh...
forgot to mention the egt's.

they're too low under vacuum and too high under boost.

i pulled the trailing coil connectors off and ran the car a bit. egt's went up about 100*C under vacuum, but didn't change much under boost.

It is still consider "arcing" or "leakage".
Your spark plug wires suck, period - replace them.


-Ted

already ordered,
but
1) they wee brand new
2) the problem mostly went away when i swapped out the plugs.

i can still run a grounded wire all over the plugs, wires and coils and not have it arch.

Get yourself some new spark plug wires. The thickest Magnecor wires are the good ones for me.

i can't use thick wires with the ls1 coils. they take a specific boot and they're designed for 7mm wires. 8 or 8.5 is about the thickest i can squeeze in there.

i love how i said i was getting new wires in my first post, then both guys said get new plug wires. i guess a little redundancy never hurt :p:

I'd like to see a picture of this if you can...

i actually tried to take a video of it last night, but either lighting, resolution, or my skills weren't good enough to have it come out.

it's trippy lookin' though--not a spark arch, just a mysterious blue glow like the fucker's possessed :p:

Did somebody stealthily install a neon lamp under your car? Maybe some LEDs?

hahahaha.
it's possessed i tell you!!!

I've heard of it happening before with an aftermarket ignition system, and it was the plug wires (you said you liked redundancy). I don't know if it's the same thing for you, but it was so serious for this guy that his whole engine bay was lit up. I am not qualified to give you an explanation of what is happening, but it is a known electrical phenomenon and has to do with inadequate insulation and high voltage.

cool. Whole engine bay lit up? I mean woah. I hope that doesn't cause any problems. I would love to see that.

I was talking with a friend of mine (who is actually wrapped up in reworking rotary drone engines now) and he was mentioning that when they were developing their ignition system they had a similar problem. (I'm sure my recollection and quote won't be 100% on, but..) ..he said something about when they had ignition systems with longer charge times plus some other factor which currently escapes me, the air surrounding the spark plug would tend to ionize and the spark would flash around the plug and jump to the block in more of a cloud than a spark.

Definitely weird though.

I 've seen it before on my 86 base model and my 91 tii. Its weird.

James

It's called a corona effect or something. I remember reading it on Jacob's book, it's supposed to be a cable at the end of its life, right before it starts jumping sparks out. Weird that you say they are new, maybe the wires' boots are not having a good contact with the spark plug, or there is a mfg. defect of some kind.

that sounds about like it's it. the vette coils are pretty strong to begin with. combine that with a relatively high charge time and we may have a winner.

i should have the plug wires by monday. tonight i'll turn the charge time down and see what happens (i have to do it at night so i can see)

now since the problem was reduced to almost null-status when i changed the plugs, i'm curious to see if maybe i should be running a different spark plug all together with these coils.

Talked to an NGK rep one time and he was telling me about this condition. I asked him why after you run a set of plugs for a while and they start to look like they are leaking compression around the base of the plug and it has stained them. He never missed a beat and told me it was a "CORONA STAIN" and that it was perfectly normal and that it was caused by this eletrical discharge. He never told me what caused it but he didn't seem to think it was a problem.

Here you gohttp://www.ngkntk.co.uk/technicaltips/coronastain.asp He shoots he scores.

this appears to be it on the left. i don't have the corona stain, but that's about the closest thing anyway.

so maybe the taylor spiral pro 8mm wires just can't handle the ls2 coils? maybe they were defective or a bad batch?

next ones are gonna be msd 8.5 race wires. hopefully they'll be in on monday and we'll have the final word.

has anyone else used ls1/2 coils yet? if so, what kinda wires, coil charge time, plugs, etc... any problems so far?

13B-RX3- thanks a lot!!

No problem. The way I understand it is that the corona stain is caused by this condition and not the other way around. So if you left those plugs in long enough the stain would appear after time.

well since it's dark, i played with the charge time.. it didn't make a difference, so it's back top-side of 4ms.

i'll have to wait till monday to see if the plug wires help or solve this. if not, it's possible that random misfire might be caused by something else....but i think we're on the right track with the ignition.

it has now been suggested that i turn the coil charge time up to 5.5ms. ok
what's the worst that can happen--i fry them? back to ol' reliable t2 coils then :p:

When in doubt either apply more voltage or apply voltage for a longer time!


Thought about it for a little while and arent the LS1 coils considered "smart igniters"? I think they have a build in dwell time and you should set up your ecm as if you were fireing an MSD. I think you should set your ecm to constant duty and the spark rise time is controled by the coil.