stereo wire does not flow high current like it says it does, the wires I found were all way over rated. I haven't had issues since ditching the stereo power cables, that wire in your coilpack looks good and thick strands.
Copper Coil Pack Mod
- Thread starter Maisonvi
- Start date
It's been a while since my masters-level electronics principles training in the USAF, but I remember that electricity doesn't travel through wires, but over the surface of them. It actually does so in a clockwise or counterclockwise manner (depending which direction of the wire you're looking down). Because of this, fine-threaded wire has greater surface area and could therefore theoretically carry more current. At the same time, the action of electricity flowing over the wire builds up heat, which increases resistance, which in turn builds up more heat (essentially a positive feedback loop). It's for this reason that we see larger gauge individual wires in wiring bundles in high-amperage applications, everything else being equal. For a coilpack, the voltage is very high, but the amperage is very low (especially being in a 12-volt system), so I'd imagine either type of compound wiring (thin- or thick-strand) would work just fine in this application.
Any electrical engineers in here, please feel free to correct me if I'm overlooking a key variable.
Silver is king! Do the coil-pack mod with rods of silver for best-case (and expensive) outcome!
Skin Effect.
Only significant for high frequencies - e.g. at 10k Hz skin depth is ~0.65 mm
At motor frequencies, 100-200 Hz max, skin depth is couple milliliters - nothing to worry about.
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correct, electricity has whats called a skin effect where it flows over the skin of the conductor, but with the high strand count wires I were using with 3-4k strands has too much resistance like you said and instead of them flowing more they just turn into giant heater coils and eventually the wire suffers enough damage until its nothing but a resistor and you get a severe lack of current flow.
My connectors and fuse boxes kept melting and I could not figure out why until I went with the 4/00 300 strand wire that I could barely bend. I could run and start 2 cars off of the wiring I installed.
im also using some 2/00 aluminum wire that is like 6 strands and that shit might as well be solid because I cant bend it, but I dont have to worry about melting it...
rodney@majinspeedcustoms
Grass-Roots Vendor
Do the lengths have to be exact? Right now I have one at 2.60 and one at 2.588
If it's too long, you won't be able to screw the coil pack down flush/seal it off from moisture, debris, etc. If it's too short, that cylinder won't fire. Looks like you're close enough to me, but maybe someone else who's done it can speak to this.
Have you tried these out yet?
[doublepost=1486186339][/doublepost]http://www.ebay.com/itm/Becker-Igni...ash=item281da33568:g:49wAAOSwiLdWAIow&vxp=mtr
Nope. No need with my IDCs where they are (~88 @ 390whp). I no longer get any spark blowout like I used to back when I'd hit 107, from time to time.
I hope someone with blowout does try them out and tests them to see if they do indeed cure (or increase the threshold) of blowout.
I was tempted to purchase them last summer but I don't know of anyone on our platform using them. I would love to know the results etc
TLDR:
Best Conductors in order:
Silver (tarnishes/cost prohibitive)
Copper (tarnishes)
Gold (does not tarnish/cost prohibitive)
Aluminum (tarnishes/harder to work with/cheap)
According to the National Electrical Code tables, stranded always has more Ohms (resistance) compared to the solid alternatives. It's not much, but it's there. For example for 14AWG wire, solid wire is 3.07 Ohms per 1000' versus 3.14 Ohms per 1000'.
And as far as aluminum wire why would you use that for anything besides cost?
#14 solid aluminum is rated at 5.06 Ohms per 1000' and stranded 5.17 Ohms per 1000'. So for the same amperage you need a larger gauge Aluminum wire to match that of Copper wire.
Just for an example, (excluding all other factors like temperature, conduit fill, etc), to feed a 200 Amp panel with a copper conductor I could use a 1 AWG wire (rated up to 220 Amps), but if I were to use an aluminum wire I would need to upsize to at least a 1/0 (rated up to 205 Amps). This disparity gets worse the higher the amperage, you have to upsize more and more just to match the rated amperage of copper.
As far as why audio wire often uses fine stranded conductors, I'm not EE, but I can only speculate it has more to do with flexibility than conductivity.
Copper as far as I know is only bested in conductivity by silver, and by so little that that cost/benefit makes copper superior hands down. Aluminum probably the 4th best metal for conductivity, but it CAN make up for it in cost, though you may lose some of those savings due to the need for larger conductors, and additional labor to install it (it's much harder to work with).
Gold is worse in conductivity than copper, but better than aluminum. Obviously cost is a factor with gold, but (pure) gold unlike copper, aluminum, and silver, does not tarnish or rust.
Yep, silver is king. I'm just curious if these aftermarket coilpacks are a good remedy for blowout. So far, the remedies are:
1. Closing plug gap. which can lower efficiency/MPGs
2. Adding aux fuel, which lowers IDCs
3. Commanding less boost or other tune alterations to lower IDCs; side effect: that'll also likely lower power levels
I can say from personal experience that #2 has worked amazingly for me. Methanol cleans my valves, increasing safety threshold/cylinder coolness above/beyond just an ethanol mix, and limits my horsepower variance throughout the winter and summer temps.
Chevy Fonseca
Greenie N00B Member
sorry for reviving an old thread, just a quick question, so basically the solid copper wire is cut to length (2 5/8'') because thats the length of the original spring? or how was that length determined? Sorry bout to change plugs and was wanting to do this. Thank you!
There's so much vibration in a running engine. Springs are there to make sure the plugs stay in contact. I've never had an issue with the stock coilpacks nor seen this "mod" solve a problem before. Blowout is almost always caused by plug problems in my (admittedly limited) experience.
It may shock you to learn that most spark plugs (99% in vehicles on the road today) feature an internal steel spring & resistor (typically 5k? carbon ceramic), which would make any spark plug boot mortifications close to redundant.
https://www.ngk.com/what-is-a-resistor-spark-plug
https://www.ngk.com/what-is-a-resistor-spark-plug