Thread: Zip Tie Madness

Gawd, you mob must spend your weekends polishing your engines. There's far worse than that around.

Anyway, Stirling, that, er, "zip tie" - isn't that American? - we call them sparky ties since sparkies use them - anyhow, that's nice work and a good idea. I've got an old Rangie that someone did that with years ago, so it must work.

Convoluted tubing over the leads is good, keeps temps down too, u can then tape or zip tie yourself silly

Okay, in none too technical terms, what was the problem you were having and how does what you did solve the problem?

I'm not questioning what you've done or anything, I'd just like to know why cos I'm not a very technical person and I'm always on the lookout for hints and tips that I may have to use myself in the future

Originally Posted by Davo

Gawd, you mob must spend your weekends polishing your engines. There's far worse than that around.

Anyway, Stirling, that, er, "zip tie" - isn't that American? - we call them sparky ties since sparkies use them - anyhow, that's nice work and a good idea. I've got an old Rangie that someone did that with years ago, so it must work.

I've never heard them be called sparky ties before and I'm a sparky

Originally Posted by sam_d

Okay, in none too technical terms, what was the problem you were having and how does what you did solve the problem?

I'm not questioning what you've done or anything, I'd just like to know why cos I'm not a very technical person and I'm always on the lookout for hints and tips that I may have to use myself in the future

The voltage to your spark plugs is High tension- somewhere in the region of 30-40KV thats 30-40 thousand Volts

So when they break down, they will arc to earth/body if possible, keeping them away from any earth (ali/Steel) points helps, but really sounds as though his leads are crook

How Stirsilver, How'd you go about achieving 12:1 CR?

Originally Posted by rovercare

I've never heard them be called sparky ties before and I'm a sparky

Must be something from a different timezone

Originally Posted by sam_d

Okay, in none too technical terms, what was the problem you were having and how does what you did solve the problem?

I'm not questioning what you've done or anything, I'd just like to know why cos I'm not a very technical person and I'm always on the lookout for hints and tips that I may have to use myself in the future

Electricity will always follow the path of least resistance to earth. With a high compression engine the gap across the electrode on the spark plug can present a larger resistance than the insulation on the leads that are used to get the electricity to that point. This can be made worse by the increased output from a modified ignition system.
The fix is to create a larger air gap around the leads to prevent the high voltage from jumping to earth or to get leads with better insulating properties. As mentioned above removing conductive dirt from the leads might help too.
On a stock vehicle it is worth pulling the bonnet at night and look for sparks coming from your leads, easily fixed in that case with a new set of leads and / or plugs.
Regards,
Tote

Sparky ties... what the?? I've only ever known them as zip ties

Right... to answer some questions:

Well, I achieved 12:1 compression by having the block machined down by 0.7mm and using 10.5:1 pistons... when I put the engine back together it was rather scary to find that the pisons were almost flush with the block at TDC!

My first attempt at solving the arcing problem was that I actually ziptied all the left hand bank leads to the top of my radiator hose. And I thought: You beauty, radiator hose is rubber... leads aren't touching anywhere so problem should be fixed.

But when I drove and I loaded up the engine at a under 1200 rpm, I could feel it miss. So not being happy with this, I opened the bonnet at night with the engine running and I pumped the throttle... I couldn't beleive it... all the leads which I had zip tied onto the radiator hose glowed in the areas they were in contact with the rubber hose, along with various other areas.

Anyway I increased the gap between the leads and anything rubber or metallic and the arcing I had seen was gone (even with all the dirt in there )

The leads are a few years old, but I don't beleive them to be in bad condition... it's just having a real hard time due to the high compression ratio and largeish plug gaps.

I drove the car in this morning and I checked to see if it would miss and it seems like the problem is gone... Will try again on the way home