Tark's plugs

["John Hofstetter" <hofs@domain.elided>]

Tark,
In my opinion, I wouldn't think that the two resistors would cause the
problem you were having.  I also don't think that having the two
resistors would affect your dwell in any way. It seems to me that a
carbon buildup like you describe has to come from running way too
rich, which could be exacerbated by poor ignition, but I don't think
the two resistors caused your ignition problem if it was ignition that
caused the too-rich running.  Wait a minute!
Your 345 is a 77? correct. It has a Holley dist. and a gold box?
Right? That system grounds out the coil thereby activating the change
in the coil's magnetic field and causing the spark. So, the resistors
are only involved in the amount of current flowing to the positive
side of the coil and have no effect on the Gold box. So does your
Terra even have a ballast resistor? As I remember, you don't need a
ballast resistor with the Gold Box.  When it is used, the ballast
resistor is mainly on the coil to keep the points from suffering from
too much current flow when they complete the ground circuit so that
the coil fires.  However, as I recall, the MSD ignition and the
Pertronix both use the ballast resistor even though they don't use any
points. Actually, I know the MSD requires the ballast as that is what
I have on my Terra, and as I posted earlier, I think Darrel told us
that it is needed on the Pertronix.
John Hofstetter
----------
From: owner-ihc-digest@domain.elided (ihc-digest)
To: ihc-digest@domain.elided
Subject: ihc-digest V6 #488
Date: Mon, Jan 18, 1999, 10:42 AM


 About my 345, the two week old plugs Dan Nees helped me change were
junk, most likely the main reason it was running like such shit.  The
question is, why did they get like that.  I am wondering now that if
having both resitors in series was too much and it caused the spark to
deteriorate at high speed due to dwell, not enough time/current to
build a good charge.  The plugs loaded up with carbon and even bridged
the gap on a couple.  I tried to pick the bridge out on couple of them
and the electrode broke out.