i was reading a popular science magazine at work today and saw an article about these new "pulse" plugs.

i was wondering if anyone had any experience with them, or any info in general.

heres their site, http://www.pulstarplug.com/

 

very interesting... they look like they did their homework...

course at $25 a pop that's EXPENSIVE!

 

LOL, $200 to change you plugs?? Thats insane. They better last the life of the car & never lose their performance for that kinda money.

 

guess I shouldn't mention i gotta $350 plug/wire setup in mine right now

http://www.nology.com/hotwork.html
http://www.nology.com/hot.html

 

Seems to me that if their claim is true it would also be way too hot of a plug for many performance application. Maybe I'm dumb, but I don't get it. I don't see any major innovations in the spark plug world. Does it light the fuel/air mixture on fire? Ok, it does the job. It creates too many parts to fail in a spark plug IMO as well. I'm skeptical

 

the ulta high speed footage on the website looks pretty legit...the science sounds right to me (i'm def NOT an electrical engineer tho)...i think i'll try them

 

Very interesting. Ill hafta try that down the road sometime..

 

These plugs are bs, do a search on here, and you will find ppl who have done there hw on them and there is no was they creat a 1,000,000 watt spark...

1 watt = 0.00134102209 horsepower

1,000,000 watts = 1341.022 horsepower.

 

i think the current and the voltage work out tho...what's so impossible about a million watt spark, that's only one thousand kilojoules of energy per second...that's not all that much really in terms of electrical energy. considering that the plug's internal circuitry stores up power (amps) at a constant voltage (volts) and watts = amps * volts then what they're website says, in theory, should work out.

they say that the average spark is 50 watts:

50 watts = X amps * 14.6 volts (the actual mean discharge of the battery while driving)
X = 3.43 amps ... sounds pretty reasonable

now here's where we need an electrical engineer, i have no idea how that circuit stores energy, at what rate, or to what amount. but if someone did know, they would be able to tell me if it's possible to store the amount of energy required.

1,000,000 watts = X amps * 14.6 volts
X = 68493.2 amps

that number seems kind of high, but lets keep in mind two things: 1, they claimed this to be the PEAK output of the plug. mind you astock LS1's rwhp peak output is around 330...but driving down the road (55mph) its only generating about 40-45hp. 2, depending on the circuitry of the car and coilpack, the plug only has to store 3.43^9 amps to achieve a million watt spark. (3.43^9 = 68493.2) if electrical energy accumulates linearly, then yes, this would be impossilbe; however, if it accumulates exponentially, this could very well be very true.

 

BS, plain and simple. I will put money on it, we studied this in the SAE engineering team meeting.

 

To me these are about as dumb as the MSD coil packs for our cars. Both are pointless & just products that are out for one thing, to clean your wallet out.

You won't ever be running anythign so special you couldn't go down to your local store & get a cheap set of Autolite or if like stated above they aren't available in your area, NGK instead. Just like the coil packs. You'll never need anything better than stock since the stockers are powering motors close to 1000RWHP without problems.

There are always gonna be products like this hitting the market & they are targeted at the suckers who fall for their advertising.

 

Tell me quite simply then ~WHERE~ the power the internal cirutry stores up comes from? Do you hook up and auxilary power source for each plug to get the power that it is storing up?

 

Isn't storing energy the job of the coil pack? It builds it up and releases it very quickly. Why would you want another storage device? Doesn't seem to add up to me. How much energy could something so small possibly hold anyways? According to their website, it says their plug stores all of the power and releases it in a very short amount of time. How can thie small coil inside the plug store the same amount of power as the much larger coil pack residing upstream from it?

Anyways, I dont see how a bigger spark will do any good anyways, Auto makers could send a lightning bolt through the piston if they wanted to, but as long as the fuel/air is ignited, its going to burn. I can see how a multiple spark discharge (MSD) system could create a more complete burn, but having a larger, initial spark doesn't seem logical to me. If you have a puddle of gas on your floor, I dont think it will burn any faster with a torch starting it rather than dropping a match in it.

Just my opinion though, I dont have the credentials to disprove it scientifically, just logically in my head.
-Jeff

 

marketing brings in the suckers.

 

it seems kinda hokey to me, id like to see an actual dyno comparision. if they actually did what they claim to do, i wouldnt be that opposed to spending $200.

really?, when i searched it, i found nothing

 

subscribing. In theory it would reduce detonation if it kept the electrodes cooler.

 

100 bagillion times hotter sparks don't tend to do that though

 

It looks like all this thing is is an extra coil pack. Coil packs take the 14v from your alt. and turn it into 20-50k volts to make a spark. This plug appears to take the 50k volts from the coils and amp that up to 1 million volts. That's why the spark happens quicker and lasts far shorter in duration.

I don't see how performance would be enhanced. Okay, the plug sparks faster, so the gasoline burns sooner in the cylinder. I'd imagine that the PCM is going to see that early detonation and retard the timing so that detonation occurs when it's supposed to. So any benefit from the plug would be canceled out. But I'm a n00b with engines, so this isn't gospel.

 

well...what the plug does, from what i can tell, is it takes the energy released by the coil and stores it. the reason is simple: when the coil releases the energy it does it gradually, like slowly tipping over a bucket. as the energy is being released, the spark slowly builds on the electrode of the spark plug until it reaches its peak then a spark is discharged. the pulse plug stores this gradual release and dumps it all at onces. imagine two buckets, slowly empty the first bucket (coil) into the second (plug) and then quickly invert the second bucket (plug)...the water comes out much faster and all at once, but it's the same amount of water. luder[pak9] has it right, the spark has much more power, but it last for a much shorter length of time. just like the bucket analogy, the same amount of water, just much faster. its the same AMOUNT of electricity, it's just released much faster, ergo, making more power.

the faster, more powerful, and hotter spark will discharge it's heat to the air/fuel mixture, the hotter the spark, the hotter the flame it creates AND the faster the flame front propogates (the volume of fuel/air burns faster). if all that happens, then the cylinder pressure is increased, just as they claim, because the air/fuel mixture is being converted to exhaust gas faster than expected in the same area as it would have expanded slowly with a regular spark. it's generating more force over the same area which equals higher pressure which *should* create more torque for the same amount of air/fuel burnt.

not to worry, the engine won't interpret a knock. a "knock" is the sound (audible ping or knock) that is caused by two flame fronts colliding. when an engine knocks, what usually happens is the air/fuel mixture starts to burn before the spark plug ignites (usually because there's too much compression for that grade of gasoline), which creates one flame front. when the spark plug sets of remainder of the air fuel mixture, creating another flame front, the two front collide and generate a knocking noise so loud that it can be heard in the passenger compartment. with all of that said, knock sensors detect the sound of a knock, not the actual pre-ignition itself.

 

So they claim a 10% increase in torque... that equates to roughly 30ft/lbs in an ls1.... I don't see that happening from a plug change.