I was obviously not thinking when I bought some elite otvc wires from ebay without checking them out and researching them. I remember back when they first hit the scene people loved them so I figured they would be good still..... right? Wrong... Got to love the snap, crackle, and pop of arcing wires. Is there anything I can do to keep the plugs from arcing? Heat shrink tubing? Plug boot protectors? Anything? I'm going to coat them in dielectric grease and seal them up with boot protectors and lots of heat shrink tubing. Anyone been successful in fixing this issue?

 

Are they arcing between the boot and the metal part of the plug?

 

Yup....

 

Maybe you can buy some quality replacement silicone boots from Summit and see if you can get them on over your terminals, other wise cut off the terminals, slide the new boots on, and recrimp some new terminals on. Not hard to do. the $13 plug terminal crimper tools work real well.

 

Did ya try narrowing the plug gap to .035? Have ya checked the resistor in the plugs? Is the exotic metal caps still on all the plugs? The caps coming off will cause a BIG gap and it is to much gap to jump.
It sounds like there is more resistance to jump the gap than to go to ground on the ouside and it's got to go somewhere. If it don't jump at the plug gap or to ground it will jump in the opti and ruin the cap from carbon tracking.The juice gotta go somewhere and it will follow the path of least resistance.

 

I left out one crucial thing.... this only happens when they get wet.

 

Back to the drawing board.
How do they get wet way up by the plugs? Ya practicing amphibious assaults? Is it condensation?

 

Whenever it rains... it doesnt take much. They are arcing by the opti.

 

I wrapped them with electrical tape, then I wrapped it over with this rubber water proof tape.

My wire doesn't arc anymore.

Brian

 

I thought those were better wires than that. The dielectric grease will help keep the water out but if it's coming through the insulation it can't be fixed to any certain degree,well without a new set.

 

I hear ya.

 

I think my elite OVC wires are causing my car to miss really bad, to the point where it is constantly backfiring. It is only running right on 3 cylinders. I'll have my MSD wires on tomarrow after I finish crimping them and putting the boots on, I'll let everyone know if I have another case of ****ty elite spark plug wires. Oh yeah, my car runs alot worse in the rain too. And I replaced the opti, coil, icm, and plugs, so the wires are all thats left...

 

I plan on getting some different wires. These wires are brand new.

 

What MSD LT1 wires part number did you end up going with? Are the opti boots all straight or are 4 of them 45 degree angled.

 

I'm curious to know if these Elite wires come with any sort've documentation that give performance specs such as ohms resistance, heat tolerance, EMI/RFI, materials used in construction, etc.?

These wires already come straight from the factory with the terminals and boots already installed and are ready to plug and play, right? I don't know about the rest of you, but it makes me cringe to think of the result of having some $7 or $8 an hour grunt on an assembly line doing nothing but installing spark plug terminals and boots all day. I can see where there would be ALOT of potential for problems in a situation like that. Maybe the reason Elite is having such a hard time keeping up with orders might be because they have a huge turnover rate? (I mean c'mon, how long could the average person stand to do such a mundane, tedious task as installing spark plug boots?) If that's the case it might explain why their quality seems to have gone straight into the crapper. New employees never know what the hell's going on so there's a good chance that alot of these wires that are going out the door are sets that a newbie got to "practice" on. (Or were made by some guy who doesn't think $8 an hour is enough pay for him to care.) Not a reassuring thought.