not sure if anyone's done this BUT...

I recommissioned an old BBQ igniter and hooked it up to 5 plugs that fit my 2005 MCSa(all gapped to rec. spec,) did the best I could with my 50mm, 1.8 lens and the results follow:



Each shot was 8 seconds and F3.5(for a little more Depth-O-Field) with a single flash from the popup flash on my d80. the ISO was 100 and white balance set to "flash" no adjustments were made to the images other than levels for the entire, finished composite.

I chose an 8 second exposure so one might appreciate sparks over a time period in lieu of a single spark which not be made immediately discernible.

The autolite seemed surprising and I think I read somewhere here about a tuner using them in his race car...
I'm not even sure this illustrates anything useful but...thoughts?

It occurred some might want a single spark shot, so here it is:



(larger pic available in my gallery)

 

Interesting experiment/photos !

many years ago when I owned a '78 Civic, I would change the spark plugs myself and sometimes get the spark plugs off the shelf at the local auto store. the ones they had (at that time) were Hitachi spark plugs. I never got much life out of them and back in those days, changing spark plugs at earlier intervals was common but these seemed to last about 8000 miles or so. Most times I would get spark plugs from the guy behind the counter and those were usually Champion, NGK or ND. The Civic manual recommended NGK or ND and I found these lasted longest...forget when I would change them out ...maybe at 12-15,000 miles.

One time when I had boughht the Hitachis, happen to open the hood at night with the car running. I was shocked to see the spark jumping the gap through the ceramic !! That was last time I bought those spark plugs and then stayed with what Honda recommended - ND and NGKs.