When viewing under the hood at night, it appears ALL of my plugs are producing a nice blue light at the plug! I could not tell if it was coming from the boot or where the porcelain meets the metal. But there is defintely arcing or shorting out. Also my coil is arcing blue light as well.

What could cause this? Wrong plugs? Bad wires? Bad coil? Coil is / was new from gmdirect, opti is new from dealer, wires are new taylors, plugs are new autolite 106's.

 

Mine does this as well. Has done it with stock wires, with Taylor wires, and with Accell 9000 wires. I consider it normal.

Thomas.

 

dude! Finally someone who understands my problem! I have been fighting this for a long time now, about a year and a half! It is seriously pissing me off! It seems to miss slightly at idle, then I can't notice it after that. I have heard people say it is the corona effect, where the plug glows. I think that is total B.S. as it isn't a constant thing with my car. You can definately see flickering, and a glowing substance does not flicker! I have used AC Delco platnium plugs, AC Delco Rapid Fires, Taylor wires and MSD Wires.... I can't figure it out! I called MSD, they told me it was a ground problem. So, I ran a groud strap from each head to the block, from each head to the car, and connected the two heads together... Think there was a change?? F no. This is why I am going to upgrade to magnecors. If it still happens, I am throwing the car away. Plus everyone I talk to said its nothing, but I am not dumb and if electricity is acring out of the wire before it gets into the cylinder, you loose power! Oh yeah, and I also tried lowering the gap to .035, but now its back to .050 and still no change. If anything, it ran worse at the smaller gap, and it was supposed to run better by "internet jockies" opinions... I will definately be following this thread!

 

This problem does suck. I just searched 'arcing' in thread title and found others have this problem too. And no one has offered a solution. So like all the others, I will throw money at it. It's cheaper if I do it than a mechanic I guess. Anyway I will try STOCK EVERYTHING. wires, plugs, coil, maybe an icm too. stock plug gap - everything!

Some theorize that the rich condition causes the acring - not vice versa. So if electric changes don't fix it, I will try new exhaust gaskets, EGR vavle, every sensor known to the LT1, put on stock throttle body, new air pump, maybe even 'new' stock manifolds!!! You name it, I'll do it. Cuz it has been two friggin years with a $6000 engine that DOES NOT WORK!!!

<rant off>

 

Bad news bud. I put the stock GM coil back on, stock opti, stock GM wires, stock GM platnium plugs, still the [edit] acring. I think you may be on to something with the rich mixture condition. I had a 383 with a pcmforless tune, very rich... made my eyes burn. Now, I have spent the money and got carolina automasters to tune the new beast... so maybe with a better tune that is actually right on for my car the arcing will go away... dunno. But so far that is the only thing that I have not tried. So, save your money for now and try to get that thing tuned really good!

 

any update yet?

 

Not yet. Just finished finals week, so I can spend more time on the car. That sucks about all the stock equipment not fixing the problem. I'm going to look at my electrical connections and grounds. I'll pull out the haynes and check all that I can. I'll keep posted any changes I can get.

 

cool. Me too with the new motor and tune, to see if runing pig rich was my problem. My finals are still two weeks away, you suck! I can't waite for school to go away so I can get crackin on this new motor!