[T3] Spark plug gap

[Jim Adney]

On 26 Sep 2011 at 21:16, Bryon Garvin wrote:

> .7 sounds good to me if it's been working for you all these years :)
> 
> Bentley reference is in Engine, Section 3, page 57.

Okay, I see it. I guess I just followed the owner's manual and got in 
that habit before the Bentley manual came out. I'd owned my first 
squareback for about 6 years before that happened. Now I use one of 
those gappers that looks like a strange pair of pliers. It doesn't 
have a .028 setting, so I use the .027.

Wider gaps give better ignition, just because there's more exposure 
to the mixture. But this also requires higher voltage before the 
spark will jump. The stock system can easily supply a lot more 
voltage, but higher voltage will eventually cause the spark to find a 
weak spot and jump across somewhere else. I can tell you from 
experience that 1.0 mm will work just fine, until you hit a little 
damp weather.    

Back in the '60s and early '70s, JC Whitney would sell you 4 Bosch 
plugs for $0.29 each, if you ordered other things at the same time. 
That price lasted a few years, then went to $0.39 and then to $0.49 
for many years. I got a lot of cheap W145T1s that way. They all came 
pre-gapped at 0.6, but were easy to regap to 0.7.  ;-)    

-- 
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Jim Adney, jadney at vwtype3.org
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
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