Unofficial Royal Enfield Community Forum
Royal Enfield Motorcycles => Bullet Iron Barrel => Topic started by: JordanMix on June 16, 2008, 07:55:12 pm
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So I purchased two iridium plugs from a local auto supplier. I didn’t really think about it before I started but I just grabbed my round little spark plug gap tool and tried to set listed gap in our owners manual. I of course broke off the brittle electrode. I then just set the gap from what was left of the electrode. I put it in my bike and It runs fine. My questions is should I put the other iridium plug in and leave it set at the factory gaped position or should I gap it at the manual spec with a pair of needle nose pliers and a feeler gauge set?
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I would try to properly gap it, replace the broken one. I'm aware that they are labeled as gapped, but if I recall it was not exact. I installedt an NGK iridium in my AVL Electra and gapped it to factory specs, luckily mine did not break. It has been running fine since (600+ miles).
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The NGK plugs are factory gapped. You should leave them at the factory gap because this is right for this specialty plug. It hardly seems worth the price difference to me. The standard B8ES plug works great for 1/4 the money.
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i agree that they are over priced but i immediately noticed a difference on my start up. My bike would sometimes take 3 kicks to get it started after it has been sitting for a while it always starts first kick now. but more importantly to me the idle is much smoother now. before i would kick my bike over and need to have the choke/enricher open for about a minuet before i could close it and the bike would still idle poorly until i got on it and rode it a bit. Now i can start the bike without the enricher and it idles much smoother immediately.
These changes happened as soon as i put the new plug in... don't know if my bike has other problems that an $8 plug is now masking but for me its $8 bucks well spent.
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Of course the weather continues to get warmer, nights less cool. Dwelling longer on the subject might reveal other factors for quicker warm-ups.
The main benefit of Iridium is the electrodes are less susceptible to erosion giving them 100,000 mile replacement intervals.
I've run'em in our H-D and Our Triumph thruxton, could not detect any difference, over standard NGK's . When they arc
the air fuel burns, its just a given.
Enfield's being prone to foul plugs on occasion are better suited to standard plugs.
also, I would be uneasy running a plug that has the tip broken off after an attempt to gap. There may be other damage that went undetected,,
the electrode could be compromised, causing it to fragment, raining metal into the combustion chamber,
respectfully Merrill