maddog05

The plug wires from the factory are cut to size and have an Al heat cap to protect the extra insulated 90 degree turn into the plug. If you haven't replaced these, your new wires may be roasting on the head or the manifold. That happens if they are touching...very quickly.

If it is as you say, arcing at the plug you must have seen it do it. This is hard to see except at night. The optispark when failing acts like a plug miss. The repeated failure of these wires is not easy to explain. It depends on your visual observation...If you did not see a blue spark arc to the head then the miss possibly is in the opti. This has been my experience after wrestling with the plugs. Replacing the wires , plugs and opti is expensive and very difficult. You may need to include the pigtail that connects the opti to the computer ... it is about 11 inches long and the # 4 post is prone to go bad. This rather cheap part GM charges $129.00 It's connection in on the top of the intake and it goes sharply down into the top of the opti. It is often needing replacement after 150K miles. All this replacement costs time and money and it ain't easy.

dangalla

i am going to take a guess and say that those wires are sitting in the box waiting to be installed, right?

i know that because if you had them installed you would most likely be making a thread very similar to the op, i know from experience

i bought taylors, they started arcing almost immediately, and before i drive my car again i need to get a set of MSD's


OVC and make-your-own wires are a bit of a task, but they are well worth it, i highly recommend dealing with the pain in the ****. you can buy the MSD wires and made4you looms to build your own OVC kit

dangalla

from your description i am going to assume that you can actually see the spark arcing, is this true?

try swapping that plug with another one that is easy to get at, and check the gap while you are at it. if it still arcs from that spot then the wire is just faulty

it's allgood

i have not read all the thread: the metal heat tape is a serious problem with arc. remove it and do not use it as it gives the spark a shorter distance to jump. i did the same thing with my jegs wires. now i have msd's. good luck

it's allgood

the fiberglass heat sock does have a round wire at the plug end that makes the nice little circle. but i'm guessing that is not the problem. i have had the same problem on # 6 when i had alumi heat tape on them. if routed correctly you really dont need protection on the wires, except for # 5 and maybe #6, im talking about running wires under and not over the valve cover.
I'm also guessing that one small arc would not give you a big miss, you would still be hitting on the cyclinder. From my experience.
Correct me if I'm wrong.

jklopez09

i have the same problem as this guy, but the miss is only noticable when looking at night with the msd wire set. Mine drives fine and i done went threw several sets of wires.

Peytons'z

I didn't use the heat tape on the MSD wires. I looked again this morning before work and number 7 and 1 are still arcing also . They only arc at idle.

brian12

Anyone had any luck with moroso blue max wires or granatellis?

Fatdog2

The spark is looking for a ground.Might remove the heat shields.I read this in past posts.MSD really are great wires.(don't like the coil wire though).

Kevin Blown 95 TA

I used Blue Max wires a long time ago but loved them and thought they were good quality. I would try them again, but I wanted to get a spool of the wire and make my own wires to fit.

As for conductive metal tape or braid over spark plug wires - if you do that, what will happen is capacitive coupling, and you need to ground that at one end or it can cause some sparking and you may lose some voltage (maybe a few k) through that. It is probably not the spark leaking through the silicone insulation though, unless you have poor quality wires or old wires with broken down insulation.