Plugs
Posting Guru
Joined: Jan 2006
Posts: 1,101
Likes: 2
From: Malvern, Ohio
The goal for a plug gap is the widest you can go without causing a misfire & lose power. Now that does not mean you can go extreme either. The wider your plug gap, the harder your coil & other ignition parts have to work just to get the electrical charge to jump the quench-gap of the plug to create the right amount of heat to ignite the a/f in the chamber. Some vehicles run better with closer (than factory setting) spark plug gaps. I would play with a couple different gap settings to find out whats best (for whatever engine you are working on) if you are that interested. May require a second set of plugs if something breaks off from adjusting too much. When you say "burn slower", there really isn't a slower burn if you have the same air/fuel mixture with either plug gap. Now if you went from a rich mixture to lean mixture, the burn would slow down because of being on the lean side. You could say it lags behind because of a weak spark, the wider gap could cause this. If this burn rate lags behind, your cylinder pressure will not hit its peak at the correct point and you will not feel as much power as before.
