Question

Discuss the economic and practical considerations between installing massive electrode or fine wire (iridium) electrode sparkplugs.

Answer 1

Always the fine wire electrodes are the best in practical or performance considerations.

Since there is an air gap between the electrodes in massive electrodes, they suffer from erosion and also due to their huge size, the electrodes themselves absorb some energy of spark and so it is difficult to generate the required spark from the gap in massive electrode plugs. So it needs more fuel to generate the required spark, and thus get the higher initial horse power to the engine or whatever the load might be.

When coming to the case of fine wire electrodes, the length between the metal electrodes can be increased. As the gap is increased it will generate the spark with higher voltage and this higher voltage will lead to hotter spark.

When you compare these two spark plugs, the massive electrode spark gap plug have an effective life of 210 to 250 hours at its peak performance. But coming to fine wire spark plugs, they have an effective life of 1200hours at its peak performance.

Effective life at peak performance is always the key to decide which is the best. Also longer effective life means we needn't buy the fine wire spark plugs frequently relative to massive electrode plugs. So in the aspect of frequent buying fine wire plugs are the best. These can also work at higher pressures when compared to the massive electrode plugs.

But the massive electrode plugs are a bit cheaper than the fine wire spark plugs.

One massive electrode costs 15 to 20 dollars.

One fine wire electrode costs 45 to 60 dollars.

So economically massive electrodes are better than fine wire spark plugs.

Hope this helps.

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