Plug wires

[smutley]

Well guy's lets all put on our thinking caps.

When was the last time you replaced your plug wires???

I was getting a miss while  riding and blamed a poor innocent plug, stopped took out the plugs and put back in the leads and wound her over loooking to see which one, got the "plug not firering and replaced it with a brand newie and checked again NO DIFFERENCE,hmmmm me thinks and changed with plug that was working and it stopped working so i looked at the coil and hoped not,i mean when does a plug lead fail you  but i tried the lead and thats what it was.
A trip to the nearest dealer (i hate doing that) since was closest, and got a set of Screamin Eagle wires $35(this is OZ) later i was walking home looked at them and saw 10mm leads  I had never seen higher than 8.8 before that day so that made me pleased put them on and tok the bike for a ride and i would say to anyone up for a service soon do yourself a favour and  replace your leads with new ones, not meaning has to be Screamin Eagles just new one as i could feel the difference instantly from just new leads, dont know what life expentancy for them are  but was first time i have ever replaced them and i can be sure wont be the last.
Now one last thing anyone know who is the maker of Screamin Eagle plug wires??? cause i like the job they do.

smutley.

Livin in the land of OZ

[mark61]

 I think "life expectancy" for spark plug wires is measured in time not miles. Rubber and the componants age. I replaced mine at 7 years even though the oem looked alright.

mark61

[Garry in AZ]

I replace mine roughly every 25-30,000 miles. Cheap insurance... I could tell the story about trying to stay in front of a logging truck in the pouring rain when a plug wire quit... but you get the picture.   

Garry

[CraigArizona85248]

Yep... thats a good reminder.  Plug wires are often overlooked.  I replace mine about every 2 or 3 years on my daily ride.  Seems like the heat here in AZ is a little harder on them.  I don't buy anything fancy.  In fact I went to AutoZone and bought a kit for a V-8.  Enough wire and end caps to make 2 sets of wires for my dual plugged panhead.  That will keep me in business for a while.

-Craig

[JC 92FXRS]

I'm glad this post showed up...my '92 has the original wires on it Probably time for a change...runs really good, but I know my old Ford used to tell me when they were bad and it was always in the rain.
Yup, something to think about.
Cheers, Jeff

[harleyjt]

Well guy's lets all put on our thinking caps.

When was the last time you replaced your plug wires???

I was getting a miss while  riding and blamed a poor innocent plug, stopped took out the plugs and put back in the leads and wound her over loooking to see which one, got the "plug not firering and replaced it with a brand newie and checked again NO DIFFERENCE,hmmmm me thinks and changed with plug that was working and it stopped working so i looked at the coil and hoped not,i mean when does a plug lead fail you  but i tried the lead and thats what it was.
A trip to the nearest dealer (i hate doing that) since was closest, and got a set of Screamin Eagle wires $35(this is OZ) later i was walking home looked at them and saw 10mm leads  I had never seen higher than 8.8 before that day so that made me pleased put them on and tok the bike for a ride and i would say to anyone up for a service soon do yourself a favour and  replace your leads with new ones, not meaning has to be Screamin Eagles just new one as i could feel the difference instantly from just new leads, dont know what life expentancy for them are  but was first time i have ever replaced them and i can be sure wont be the last.
Now one last thing anyone know who is the maker of Screamin Eagle plug wires??? cause i like the job they do.

smutley.

Livin in the land of OZ

So, how old were they, and how many miles were on them? 
jt

[Justpassingas]

uh ohh....I guess 11 years and 75K later I'm a bit over do....thanx for the reminder

[Clintster]

I do them every two seasons, usually after the initial shake down period.  Ride for a month, make a list of services I overlooked for upgrades during winter months.  So when the shakedown service is completed, usually before Memorial Day, the Summer is just about the best riding the TC can provide.  

[Eglider05]

I'll be replacing them every couple of years from now on. Here's why. Last year I did something really stupid, (the short version) I filled an empty tank completely with diesel and after trying to get it started realized what I had done. To make a long story short ever since I was having intermittent idle and WOT problems that I thought was due to the diesel (it wasn't).

At first I thought it was the fuel filter so I changed it, nope so then I hooked it up to my PC (TMAX) and you could see the rear cylinder going lean when this would happen so then I threw a new O2 sensor on it, nope that wasn't it so I assumed it was an injector. It didn't happen all that much, with a little throttle it was gone and it was the end of the season so I didn't mess with it.

Over the winter I tore the motor down for a new build and sent the injectors out to Marren for cleaning and calibrating. When they came back the diagnostic sheet showed one of them to have a bad spray pattern and wasn't putting out near as much as the other so HA! I found the problem. After 2,500 trouble free miles it started again even worse. While I had the bike idling I  pulled off the rear spark plug wire and there was no change except it never got better. After I put the wire back on it smoothed right out (of course). I started rotating the wire back and forth on the plug and I could make it happen just as though I was turning a light switch on and off. I put a set of new wires on and haven't had a problem since. I looked the old wires over and couldn't see much other than a nick in one spot, must have had an internal break. Thinking back it starting doing it right after I pulled the plugs to do a compression check but I never put 2 and 2 together.

Rick

[texaskatfish]

Damn - I keep pretty good maintenance records but I cannot recall if these wires on Gracie are original or not.

I do recall the old "look closely at them in the dark to look for any arcing" while the motor's runnin................gonna have to check this out.

[Milehog]

Plug wires can be unpredictable creatures. I had some high quality one year old wires cause an intermittent full throttle stumble even though they tested OK on the ohm meter. That one was expensive to diagnose.

[rad3766]

Just replaced mine, prolly the originals w/70k miles.
Did it to be reasonably sure I could eliminate plugs, coil and wires as the culprit to a dead cylinder problem I'm working my way thru.
Start with the cheap/obvious stuff, go from there.