A
Anonymous
Guest
Glanced through some other threads about secondary wires and thought I'd post about some things I've noticed in my own endeavors.
First, there's the original ignition wire itself. 7mm steel stuff. Not copper. Not steel-clad copper. The section of ignition wire is from my 1000 and is original to the bike. I've kept the coils in case I ever needed some reference from them. The following pics show some interesting things and I've taken the best pictures that I can to show you what I see as it's in front of me. I'll update this thread as time allows to show other things I've noticed particular to running a hot ignition and what happens to factory wires when the voltage is increased.
Top to bottom is:
1) Scosche 8ga. amplifier power cable
2) emergency jumper cable wire - the kind a bank gives with those "emergency" kits when a new account is opened
3) factory Honda negative battery cable wire
4) GL1000 ignition wire
Ok, so lets look at this stuff.
The factory ignition wire is on the left, the Scosche 8ga. is on the right. The other two we'll dismiss from here out. The jumper cable stuff is junk, and the battery cable stuff is not as good as the Scosche.
If we look at the Honda ignition wire closely, we see that there is two different compounds of the wire, which is steel wire. Look closely and you can see where the tighter twist starts and it remains uniform in its twist to the end of the wire. This section has nothing to do with the plug caps being twisted onto the wire, in case you're deciding that it does.
In looking further, we can see a strange way in which TEC has made this stuff. The wire is twisted and crimped periodically and in a uniform way for some reason. I don't know what that reason is, but when looked at closely I see the crimp marks of the tighter twisted sections. I assume that it something to do with the manufacturing processes of the late 1970's.
The crimp marks are more easily seen here when I seperate the 7 strands of steel wire:
(see this photo below in the next post. I'm outta room here.)
The jacket of the Honda wire is indeed 7mm. A fair amount of jacketing for so little wire. High Voltage needs this type of thick insulation. There is something called "skin effect". Essentially this means that most all of the voltage present travels along the outside of the wire. The thick insulation attempts to keep surrounding avenues of ground away from the wire. This we all know.
Ok, the above just shows some things I've noticed with the stock ignition wire.
Below we'll look at the Scosche 8ga. oxygen-free amplifier power cable.
The "oxygen-free" part of the Scosche cable requires additional steps in its manufacture. Looking close at the pics above of the factory stuff we see that the inner rubber compound is not bonded to the wire. Is this important? We'll talk about that later... Looking closely at the Scosche wire and we see that it is. This is important if running your ignition hot and triple the factory voltage.
We cut away the jacket and we see a substantial amount of copper wire:
Then we start to see how it is built:
Then we do a strand count:
We'll get to this strand count some time later as well.
We also see that this wire is 6.5mm versus the 7mm of the factory stuff. Important, but not right now:
This is what makes it important right now versus later, the water-tight seal tha 6.5mm gives when used with new NGK plug caps:
First, there's the original ignition wire itself. 7mm steel stuff. Not copper. Not steel-clad copper. The section of ignition wire is from my 1000 and is original to the bike. I've kept the coils in case I ever needed some reference from them. The following pics show some interesting things and I've taken the best pictures that I can to show you what I see as it's in front of me. I'll update this thread as time allows to show other things I've noticed particular to running a hot ignition and what happens to factory wires when the voltage is increased.
Top to bottom is:
1) Scosche 8ga. amplifier power cable
2) emergency jumper cable wire - the kind a bank gives with those "emergency" kits when a new account is opened
3) factory Honda negative battery cable wire
4) GL1000 ignition wire
Ok, so lets look at this stuff.
The factory ignition wire is on the left, the Scosche 8ga. is on the right. The other two we'll dismiss from here out. The jumper cable stuff is junk, and the battery cable stuff is not as good as the Scosche.
If we look at the Honda ignition wire closely, we see that there is two different compounds of the wire, which is steel wire. Look closely and you can see where the tighter twist starts and it remains uniform in its twist to the end of the wire. This section has nothing to do with the plug caps being twisted onto the wire, in case you're deciding that it does.
In looking further, we can see a strange way in which TEC has made this stuff. The wire is twisted and crimped periodically and in a uniform way for some reason. I don't know what that reason is, but when looked at closely I see the crimp marks of the tighter twisted sections. I assume that it something to do with the manufacturing processes of the late 1970's.
The crimp marks are more easily seen here when I seperate the 7 strands of steel wire:
(see this photo below in the next post. I'm outta room here.)
The jacket of the Honda wire is indeed 7mm. A fair amount of jacketing for so little wire. High Voltage needs this type of thick insulation. There is something called "skin effect". Essentially this means that most all of the voltage present travels along the outside of the wire. The thick insulation attempts to keep surrounding avenues of ground away from the wire. This we all know.
Ok, the above just shows some things I've noticed with the stock ignition wire.
Below we'll look at the Scosche 8ga. oxygen-free amplifier power cable.
The "oxygen-free" part of the Scosche cable requires additional steps in its manufacture. Looking close at the pics above of the factory stuff we see that the inner rubber compound is not bonded to the wire. Is this important? We'll talk about that later... Looking closely at the Scosche wire and we see that it is. This is important if running your ignition hot and triple the factory voltage.
We cut away the jacket and we see a substantial amount of copper wire:
Then we start to see how it is built:
Then we do a strand count:
We'll get to this strand count some time later as well.
We also see that this wire is 6.5mm versus the 7mm of the factory stuff. Important, but not right now:
This is what makes it important right now versus later, the water-tight seal tha 6.5mm gives when used with new NGK plug caps:
