I have been using side gapped plugs in my truck and power equipment for years. I switched between a standard plug and a side gapped plug in one of my chainsaws and the tune was very different. I don't remember which one was rich/lean, but it was a drastic change. I'm just curious if anyone else uses them?
I had no idea what you were talking about with "side gapped" spark plugs. So i looked it up and read a little bit. My only question is that if it's such a good idea why aren't auto manufacturers using them in stock motors to help fuel economy and decrease emissions?
same here never heard of it but I've heard of indexing- and from what I just read is they wear faster since the electrode is worn out faster. auto manufacturers would rather have a stable long lasting 100k tuneup than replace a plug every 20kish. that would be my guess why they don't do it.
My next question was going to be if he indexed all his plugs too. They do it in Nascar so it must be good.
So whats the advantage? Fuel mileage increase? Cause it's not less maintenance. With Inthepines example you could need to replace plugs 4-5 times more often. Are you going to save that much in fuel to justify your time to replace plugs and the cost of plugs 4:1? Maybe you could get away with copper core plugs for this vs platinum/iridium? They're about 1/4 the price. Then it's just your time you have to offset with the fuel savings. I personally wouldn't want to break even though. I have funner things to do than clip and file electrodes and change spark plugs.
They recommend using copper over the platinum/iridium plugs if you were to do this. No one is asking you to do it though, he just wanted to know if anyone else did it. From what I read yes more HP and better mileage from it, it's like the old days when ppl put a msds coil into their vehicles. Better spark is almost always a better thing unless it's melting your pistons haha I'd be willing to give it a shot on my 460's if it can eek more mileage out of a gallon of gas. I never bothered with trying to index though, I'm not trying to win any races with those trucks.
Sorry it came across that way. Just figured I'd start the conversation. A simple "no" doesn't seem to suffice for me. A discussion as to why someone does something is much more interesting, at least to me.
Based on the Fig. 6, overall data was showed the highest fuel consumption was produced by standard spark plug and the less consumed is 1.0mm side gapping spark plug. The result for others side gapping spark plug showed a better fuel consumption when compared to the standard spark plug. 409.7 g/KWH of fuel required to produce a power of 1 kilowatt for duration of 1 hour was obtained from standard spark plug means it is consumed more fuel compared to the all of side gapping spark plug. For overall data, side gapping spark plug has consumed less fuel consumption https://www.researchgate.net/public...Spark_Plug_on_Engine_Performance_and_Emission interesting read
When I was into drag racing, we indexed our plugs. Every hundredth of a second counts. Never side gapped.
If side gapped was that much better then OEM would find a way to make them work long term...that and all the hubbub over Splitfire and the like would have caught on, rather than died off...those things were everywhere 10-15 years ago...can't say the last time I seen them in a store now.
I never bothered to check for mileage increase. I know my truck has more torque. Side gapped plugs seem to advance timing by allowing the flame kernel to spread quicker. I did index the plugs on my truck, at least as much as possible by just swapping them around. Plug life seems to be fine. I can pull one again and check.
Interesting. Never heard of side gapping until now. I'm going to try this in a saw to see if I can feel it. I've known about indexing for many years and they sell indexing "washers" to use on vehicles but never actually tried them.
