The spark plug wires are prepared out of a rubber insulation made out of silicon and a conducting core. This core is filled in with carbon wire or fiber. Such core is made to be bent towards the end of the wire while the metallic boot is curled at the wire insulation. Most of the aftermarket wires do not have inbuilt boots that permits the user to add the kind of boot he chooses by trimming the wire to his desired length.
These spark plug wires installed within the cars and other automotive vehicles are the ones that provide the spark plugs, the energy they require in order to generate a great spark for your car. But with ageing, these spark plug wires tend to corrode and hence get brittle with insulation and their cores get distorted and broken in places. Any breakdown of these wires leads to leakage of the energy meant for the spark plug and could eventually result rough car runs or engine misfiring or destroy spark plugs for that matter. Spark plug wire problems can remain hidden if not detected well in time. In this article we try to explain the different aspects of a spark plug wire and also provide you with a way of checking the proper functioning and running of the wire installed within your car so that your car enjoys an enhanced life.
The popular spark plug wires use OEM wires enabled with a carbon flow with the least RF noise. On the flip side, these carbon fibers possess high resistance which eventually reduces the energy of the spark.
Wires that have solid nature typically possess very low levels of resistance but have the capacity to produce unnatural amounts of RF and so it disturb the radio interfaces within as well as outside the vehicles.
Such interference can potentially bring great problems for electronic equipments within the car itself like the fuel injection or the panel meters or for that matter the ABS system itself. The spectral output generated by the ignition wires can range within 10 kHz to 10 GHz.
There exist a few wires which have an inbuilt core made out of solid metal and it is wound helically which eventually make it inductive when exposed to high frequencies thereby minimizing EM radiation.
When the wire surfaces get tarnished or somehow contaminated, a large amount of power can get leaked as and when gets in contact with the metallic or ground surface. The best way to keep a track of any such leakage is to check out the engine console at night or in a dark environment. In case of any leakage, one shall notice corona discharges where the leakage is significant. Non presence of the coronas does not mean that there is complete absence of the leaks.
For deeper checking, it is advisable that the wires are kept away from any metallic surface or coolants as they are quite prone to air & silicon.
