Guys, I really wouldn't worry too much about seeing Pulstar ads in D-Sport, Modified, etc. You've got to keep in mind that companies like Denso, NGK and Bosch are MUCH bigger advertisers than Pulstar is ever likely to be, so as editors we're probably pissing off our sales staff just by testing these and giving ink to a small company that's in direct competition with these big dollar spark plug advertisers. We've got nothing to gain by publishing results from these tests other than helping to shed some light on a new product that may prove to be a real bang for the buck leader. Our jobs as editors are in no way linked to ad sales...but if newsstand and subscription sales start to tank, well then I'm in trouble.

I'm not saying editors haven't been or couldn't be influenced by an advertiser...but in my two years in this industry I have yet to see it happen, because most editors are smart enough to realize that without their reputation, they're finished. All it takes is to get caught selling out once and you might as well look for a job in another industry. Without doing consistently credible testing, magazine sales would tank and then we'd be out of a job anyway.

 

Dave, how is everything going? Thanks for taking the time to respond to everyone’s questions in such detail. I have a question so hopefully you will be able to answer it. I have never been a big fan of ignition amplifiers. I know they are designed to work with OEM components, but the factory coils are designed to only "send through" so many watts or so much power. When you give the factory coils more watts than what they are designed to handle it can and most likely will damage the coils causing them to work improperly. Being a person who doesn't have the kind of technology to see rather or not products like the HKS DLI II are overloading the factory coils keeps me wondering if they are damaging the factory coils...

So with that said i have looked into actual ignition coils. Now it seems as though aftermarket ignition coils and these pulstar spark plugs are working in a similar fashion. The ignition coil actually amplifies the primary and secondary park, this way you are not wasting most of the spark in what's called "long duration spark". So what the ignition coils do is increase the speed of the spark and waste less energy. Now if the pulstar spark plugs are essentially doing this (increasing the wattage) what would happen if you were to run the pulstar spark plugs with a set of plasma direct ignition coils?

-Sean

 

Ayup, thats me, thanks for the answers, both here and there.

 

Nismo G, that's a really interesting question. When talking to one of the engineers at Pulstar they did make mention of their plugs "creating plasma" as part of their explanation for the power gains we saw in our test. As you know, plasma has very high electrical conductivity, so if the plugs do generate plasma I can see how this might enhance the power of the spark and resultant combustion, but what I'm unsure of is how the plugs create plasma any differently than a standard plug, since I think one could define the spark from a standard plug as plasma (given that the ionized gases in the combustion chamber are what act as a conductor for the electrons to jump the spark gap). Could be he meant that Pulstar plugs generate a more powerful plasma, or perhaps I'm just way off base on what plasma is how it may relate to the ignition process. I'll do some more research on this and ask for clarification from Pulstar too.

With respect to plasma direct ignition coils, say like those offered by Okada Project, these are a spark amplifier as well, but as far as I know they've never made any claims about speeding the growth of the ignition plume the way Pulstar does with their new plugs, though they do claim to release 4x as much energy at initial spark compared to a standard coil so perhaps they're saying the same thing but with different emphasis. So maybe these are really doing more or less the same thing as the Pulstars. I'm not sure. I think once I learn more about Pulstar's technology I will be able to provide a bit more insight.

What's interesting about this though is that Pulstars can be installed in any type of engine regardless of ignition system, while plasma direct ignition coils are only for coil-on-plug setups like on our G's (but would be useless for a distributor setup like on Honda B-series engines). So maybe the Pulstars are just a more versatile version of the PDIC.

I haven't tried the Pulstars with a PDIC, but I would have to guess that there's a limit to how much wattage you can chuck at the ignition process before there's a diminishing return. I will ask Pulstar if they've tested their plugs with a PDIC in place and if there's any concern with the two technologies being combined on the same engine. Without having tested this type of setup of even fully understanding how each work, I don't want to harzard a guess here and give anyone the wrong idea.

 

Thanks, let me know when and if they respond. I think it would be interesting to see the both (coils and spark plugs) work together and possibly creat some pretty nice numbers. I know people who have replaced just the coils and have seen awesome results (around the 5-12whp range). So i wonder if our engines could see more results with both....?

Anyways, let us know!

-Sean

 

Sean, I will let you know what Pulstar says. I'm sure they'll respond to e-mail today.

Over on my350z.com it was suggested we should test the Pulstars against some other "high performance" plugs like iridiums, and if we do go ahead with this idea (which I think is a good one) we could also throw a PDIC into the testing mix too. That could make for a very interesting ignition & spark test!

 

+1 on the above. Would be an interesting and informative test!

 

subscribed
. Very good information Modified Dave

 

updates?

 

Hey guys. Sorry I haven't been back to this thread in a while. Been busy with other stuff at the mag.

Anyway, I just followed up with Nathan from Pulstar on a couple of your questions you guys raised here. Here's how I worded my questions to him and below each is Nathan's response:

1. Aren’t the factory coils designed to only "send through" so many watts or so much power? When you give the factory coils more watts than what they are designed to handle can’t it damage the coils, causing them to work improperly?

For the first question, let’s talk about energy output. Pulstar is more efficient. Look at the attached o-scope shot.



You can see the voltage rise to roughly 25kv and then a sharp peak is formed as a streamer is emitted across the spark gap. The Pulstar capacitor charges during the entire time that the voltage is on the rise before the streamer is formed at the very peak of the curve. This “area under the curve” is energy that a standard plug wastes as heat, so it’s energy that is being produced by the coils that is not being put to use in a conventional plug. Pulstar compresses this energy. The total output from the coil doesn’t change, but by releasing the above mentioned stored energy into a very compact less than 2 billionths of a second pulse, a great deal of that energy is converted to plasma which is a far more efficient method to light fuel.

2. Are these plugs working in a similar fashion to ignition coil amplifiers or plasma direct ignition coils like the HKS DLII or Okada Projects PDIC? If so, what would happen if you ran Pulstar plugs with Okada Project PDIC? Would there be any added benefit seen from this kind of setup, or would one cancel out the effect of the other?

The Pulstar is a similar idea, but a different application. The plasma direct coil produces lots of little sparks. The Pulstar keeps the spark duration the same, but front loads it with a lot of extra energy that is normally wasted as a coil tries to ionize the spark gap.

Nathan didn't comment on whether or not it'd be safe to run Pulstars with a PDIC or coil amp, which I assume means he hasn't tested this setup. I can't see any reason why it wouldn't be safe to run both the Pulstars and a PDIC setup, but I think you'd see little to no gains by running both since they're essentially trying to do the same thing. So I'd go with one or the other. But I am going to try a PDIC setup on my K24 Honda to see how it works compared to the Pulstars, so I'll let you know how that goes. May be a few months before I get a chance to do this though.

 

interesting, from the sounds of it, you may be causing some problems by combing the pdic with these plugs, if indeed the amp "produces a lot of little sparks", the pulstar may not ever "store" enough energy to bridge the gap, or if it does, it may be at the wrong time. i assuming timing may need to be adjusted, or is the charging time identical to the ionization lag?

and as a point of curiosity, do they make 'em for small engines? or two strokes?

 

Good point about the "many small sparks" from a PDIC to the single larger/earlier spark from the Pulstars potentially being incompatible. I'll raise that question again with Nathan to see what he thinks.

In terms of timing, Nathan has mentioned to me that although the plugs are perfectly safe to run with stock ignition timing, he did say that I might want to pull a few degrees of timing with the Haltech unit I'll be running on the G and then add that timing back in 1 degree at a time to see how the engine likes it. This implies that the Pulstar plugs do have the effect of advancing timing somewhat, which I presume is part of how they make more power than a standard plug. But you shouldn't have to retune for these plugs -- it's just that if you have the ability to retune, doing so is always a good idea when you've made a modification that's added 5+% more power like these plugs seem to.

You can check their website for applications. Not sure if they make them for smaller engines. Maybe I should see if they'll make a set for my Honda Ruckus!

 

Do you guys recommend that I buy a pair of these?

 

You'd actually need 3 pairs of them, or six in total. One for each cylinder

I can't guarantee you'll see the same results we have in testing, since we've only tested them on one car so far, but I think the initial results are encouraging enough that some people are going to want to try them right away, while others will want to wait and see more results before plunking down their $. It's up to you to decide if you want to try them now or wait for more test results to roll in.

If you do decide to try them asap, consider dyno testing before/after and let us know how the results look for you, or at least do a before/after fuel efficiency test and let us know how they're working from that perspective.

 

Keep you posted. I will dyno before and after.