E3 Disappointment

[Raymond]

A few years ago, I tried E3 spark plugs in my Pagoda and the initial results seemed quite promising.  Someone asked me today if I recommend them and the answer is a definite, "No".  So I thought I should update the story. 

At first the plugs seemed to be okay, but I ran into some irregular fouling issues.  Because of that first blush of improved fuel economy and pep in the Pagoda, I tried them in a BMW E30 and A VW Golf.  Neither of those cars showed any improvement in fuel economy or performance.  After a few thousand miles both cars started to lose fuel economy and the BMW started having some peculiar misfiring.  When the E3s were pulled, there was no obvious wear.  I suppose that is because of their unique design.  I've gone back to NGK in all of them and there have been no further issues. 

I chalk up this experiment as a failure. 
 

[Shvegel]

Pretty much all marketing there.  I was a part of a spark plug test conducted by Bosch back in the 70's.  At that time I was racing 250 2 stroke Open Modified snowmobiles. Our engines were high compression, turned 16.500 RPM and Being 2 stroke we also we also ran oil mixed into the gasoline at  16:1.  Bosch tried just about every kind of ground electrode(ground strap technically) under the sun with us and the conclusion was the all of the multiple electrode, Swallow tail and bridge electrodes they came up with just ended up getting in the way of the flame front across the piston top and actually increased the chance for incomplete combustion,detonation or pre-ignition.  In the time since multiple electrode plugs have become the standard for modern cars but I would suspect to increase the life of the tip electrodes to a whopping 100,000 miles.  The E3 design is basically a multiple electrode design tarted up by tying the three electrodes together with a bridge. Keep in mind that the spark is going to jump across the least resistive point only and not across all three so in effect you have a single electrode plug with a whole bunch of shrouding around the spark.

For reference an 8,000 HP top fuel dragster spark plug has no ground strap at all. and uses what is called a surface electrode. This would be ideal but unfortunately we want our cars to go more than 1000 feet without fouling.

I have seen multiple electrode in use under normal firing conditions using a chamber of compressed air instead of air/fuel and they will sit there and fire the same electrode for a while then jump to another for a while. At no time have I ever seen multiple sparks to the different points. "You can't change the laws of physics."