I was wondering which spark plugs i should put in my 84 z28 H.O. 305 I had AC Delco Rapid Fire they werent bad but im thinking of getting Split Fire triple plat. I wanted to know if anyone has used the triple plat. split fire plugs?

 

Honestly splitfires are crap for a daily driven engine. We sell them were I work and we have people come back with messed up plugs.

I would go with any regular plug like a delco or champion. (Champion makes delco plugs) or a ngk plug I have had good luck out of those.

I see people fall into this pitfall of thinking a plug is going to give them power gains and always get let down. The plain truth is that the only gains you will see from any of these expencive "designer" plugs is if you have terriable plugs that they are being replaced with. It is just like people thinking a msd box is going to give them great power gains it just doesn't happen.

Go get a set of regular plugs and save yourself the money and hassle of having to change them again.

Ps I do like the bosch platnum plugs (not the plus 4 THEY ARE CRAP) I have noticed long life with a cheep price.

good luck and happy shopping.

 

I forgot to explain why splitfires are crap the spilt electrode erodes very quickly in a street driven engine.

 

Thanks for the advice

 

I had good results with my plat +4's, and when I put them in, there was nothing wrong with the plugs they replaced, so it should be a fair comparison. I've had them in there a year...prolly about time I pulled them out and took a look at them

I never tried the splitfires...they just seemed like a bogus idea to me.

Rapidfires worked the best, but within 3,000 miles they wore to the point they were no different than ordinary plugs, and performed about the same.

 

AC Delco regular. Platinum lasts longer, but copper conducts better. Splitfires or +4s are a gimmick.

 

I didnt think that Federal Mogul made Delcos.

My Dad has had Split Fires in his 68 Nova since '93. They run fine although he doesnt drive the car that much.

NGK now makes Iridium plugs. It is a harder metal, but once again it comes down to which elements conduct better, and I dont think that Iridium conducts very well.

 

I ran Splitfires from '94 to current, and never had any problems- until I put my MSD box on! Seems the MSD box eats the Splitfires' center electrode. I'll be moving back to regular AC Delco plugs this summer. But the Splitfires always worked great for me... they might not have helped anything, but they didn't cause any of the problems that stupid people talk about. "Splitfires ruined my engine! The plugs were covered in oil!!" Well, sure, if your rings are shot or your valve stem seals are shot, and you bought Splitfires that were too cold (heat range is part of a plug's design), that means the plugs never reached their self-cleaning temperature.

Although I did notice that Splitfire might be at fault for their catalog, seems that between two years of the 2.8 V6, while GM kept the spark plugs the same, Splitfire went to a plug that was one heat range colder. So maybe Splitfire's catalog was wrong, but still, those people make me laugh. But never pay $5.95 for a Splitfire. The Splitfire company dropped the price of their plugs 3 years ago from $5.95 to $2.95!! But guess what? You'll only find that price drop at Summit. If you go to Pep Boys or Strauss or Autozone, they're still selling the plugs for $5.95! Ain't that some crap? I even called Splitfire and told them, the guy sounded ticked, and he said "They shouldn't be doing that. What's the address of that store?" The Splitfire platium plugs also dropped from $9.95 to $5.95 - but I never used them. http://www.summitracing.com

Oh, and Poncho, I never had the split electrode degrade, ever. The center electrode started to be worn after I put the MSD box on, but I can still show you a perfect split electrode. Then again, I change my plugs every summer, I assume the people that brought their cars in hadn't? Hell, if I had platinum 100,000 mile plugs, I'd still change them every year.

 

That's odd. I used to work at a place that headed the steel shells for AC plugs, and it wasn't Cooper Industries. Then again, that was several years ago. When did they start making AC/Delso plugs? I've always used Champions anyway, since you can't get Auburn plugs for a street car engine.

 

i'm co-oping for honeywell, makers of splitfire, autolite and motorcraft. we do comptetitor tests, of course, and i saw a report that was done on the +4s. a spark always travels the path of least resistance and so on the +4s, it will start by jumping to the nearest ground electrode to the center electrode and after a while, that ground electrode wears down and the spark begins to jump to another electrode because it's now closer than the first, and so on til it goes to all four electrodes. so you only get one spark at a time anyway, despite four ground electrodes. while all this is happening, the center electrode is wearing also and begins to recede into the ceramic which makes the spark carve a trench through the ceramic to get to the ground electrode. so after the spark makes a couple trenchs, that piece of the ceramic breaks off inside your engine. ceramic is very very hard so you can imagine what it can do in your cylinders.

i'm on my college rotation now so i cant get pics of the report but i'll be back in july and will try to get some then

splitfires are just a gimic. i have heard, though, that people using them on two stroke engines love them.

the best plugs to use are a finewire double platinum.

champions are garbage, not like they used to be, i hear. i tested some at work and i thought the machine was broken they were so bad.

 

whom are they made by?

 

i run accell shortys and i havent had any probs, splitfires are junk stay away

 

crazyjoe,

finewire refers to the center electrode being real thin, like 1mm and the double platinum means there's a platinum point on the tip of the center electrode and on the bottom of the ground electrode. i know autolite/motorcraft makes them and prolly some other companies but i'm not sure which.

 

Federal Mogul owns Champion now.

NGK makes a fine platinum plug (called G-Power)

 

I didn't like the Accel Shorty's cause the tips kept coming loose on them.

 

I just found out about the NGK iridium plugs a week ago. I've been wanting to try iridium plugs but the only company that had them was denso and they were 100 bucks for a set of 8. But the NGK iridiums are like 3 or 4 bucks each. Wonder how they compare?????

 

for $3 i'd try em, i think the iridium is supposed to prevent wear just like platinum. if platinum works for you i'd stick with that cuz it's cheaper.

 

Man, I just can't keep up with all thses mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures. As long as I'm not supporting murdering Mitsubishi, it doesn't really matter a lot. Thanks for the lesson.

And yes, NGK has some good spark plugs as well. They have a very good ceramics program. And unless something drastic has happened at Champion, they are still one of only two FAA approved spark plugs, so they can't be complete garbage.

 

I got the Bosch Platnum +4's and they are a really nice plug. It idles pretty consistently. But I hear the best plug out there is NGK's plug. But you gotta spend some dough.

 

Funny, I ran them for how many years? They're no more junk than a Bosch +4 or an NGK v-power. The Splitfires never claimed to split the spark apart, they were intended to open up more of the spark to the a/f mix.... basically, duplicating a "cut" spark plug.


That happened to me too! I wasn't using the shorties, I was using the regular U-grooves. Damned brass terminals... I knew every time I had a misfire, to tighten the tips. What a pain! I even went back to Pep Boys, and opened up 3 boxes of plugs- all had the same problem. (This is when they used to put the Accel plugs in the aisles, near the hi-po exhaust tips.) Hopefully Accel has fixed that problem.

 

i have asked myself that same question since I first started modifying my cars years ago: what plugs are better. I have tried about 99% of the plugs out there and gave them all a decent chance in the car running them for about a year. the worst plug i ever used was the accell shorty plug. all the platnuims are a waste of money to me. I have settled down with AC delco .99 cent plugs. thats what GM put in the car from the factory and that what goes in there now. my buddy just changed his plugs in his 96z28, he has 68K miles on it and the plugs looked pretty good. he went and bought Borch platnuims for about $20. I like to put my money in better places. get regular plugs they work fine.

 

It hasn't been going on for too long that I know of. but awhile back gm started having all their parts made by other companys. Gm nolonger makes any of their products, they farm all their work out. If you guys noticed Wallmart pulled all ac delco parts off their parts off their stores shelfs. GM came through and told all of their parts dealers that if they didn't carry a full line of their products they they weren't going to stock any of their parts at all. I work for Oreillys auto parts now and they are nolonger stocking any AC Delco parts other then sparkplug wires, sparkplugs, and filters. They have really pissed off the aftermarket dealers with this crap too.

Way I figure it It just gives me another reason to buy other brand parts other then cost.

 

Vader pretty soon there is only going to be two companys that make aftermarket repair parts. Everyone is buying everyone else up so soon that there are only a couple of companys making regular (non performance) aftermarket parts for cars and trucks.

 

Its that way in the corporate more than you think. The company that owns my company, owns SEVERAL companies. They buy 2 companies a week. They own most of the electrical compontent companies, plastics, underwater cabling, submarines, alarms, it never ends...