Just installed a new set of NGK TR55's and an MSD Blaster Coil. Put the car in the garage at night with the door half way down, or up, whichever way you wanna look at it, and all lights off, I can see spark or arching on the metal part of the spark plug. It flashes a little circle, for lack of better words. Due to the headers and angle of the motor, I can only see a few, and the ones I can see are all doing the same thing. Is this normal?

Also on the MSD Blaster Coil, I can see some sparatic arcing between the coil itself and the metal that goes around the coil. Is this normal?

Trying to diagnoise what seems like a bad misfire. Didn't start till a day after the new plugs. Coil is less than a month old. Obviously, I was thinking I got some bad plugs first, but now after I see the coil doing that I don't know.

 

I am sure that you need to fix this and you will probably fix your running issues. I saw tons of threads about what you describe but not sure what the easiest fix is.

 

Well, the coil I took off was GM coil and it still worked, I just bought an MSD coil because I was upgrading. The GM one has at LEAST 70,000 miles on it and the connection for the plug wire was a little nasty lookin'. Anyhow, sanded the connection down and reinstalled the old coil and we'll see if it clears up any tomorrow. Too late right now for a test drive.

Still don't know what to think about the plugs. Thanks for the help!

 

Same problem with the changed coil. I guess I'm going to change the plugs out next, again.

 

Did you ever get the arching issue resolved? What was the fix? Thanks

 

Well, yes and no. The status of the car right now is this:

I decided to change the Optispark and when I did I found that when I flipped it over with the connection end facing the ground oil came running out. So, obviously, the Optispark was bad. What damaged it, I'm not 100% sure. If I had to guess, I would say that the motor having around 150,000 miles, has a little more than normal crankcase pressure which cause the oil to leak around the Opti seal and into the rotor section of the Opti eventually causing the failure.

I replaced the Opti and seal and all is well when the car gets warm. Since the last post I changed plugs and went with some NGK TR6's gapped at .055. This plug is one heat range colder than factory plugs. I believe that with my overkill cooling system causing the car to get no hotter than 170, the plug is not getting hot enough until the car has been run for about 5-10 min. After the car gets to normal operating temp, it has no miss fire issues. Cold the car miss fire's at idle or WOT.

About the MSD Blaster coil. I have read some post saying that the coil caues Optispark failure and then others, some very respected members, saying that they have ran the coil for a long time with no issues. My take on the matter personally is that wheter or not it had ANYTHING to do with the Opti failure, the Opti failed shortly after I put it on. So, if your asking me if I will ever put another MSD Blaster coil on my car, the answer is no, I have a factory GM coil back on there and will keep one on there. I am going to try and get my money back for the MSD coil.

I'll try and remeber to update the post when I get some NGK TR55's in the car and see if that helps the miss fire when the car is cold.

Hope that helped.