What size Plug gap do you run ?

otakar wrote:

Well, I got my ACCEL #142 plugs in today. Now I know why Denso Is not suing them for Patent infringement. The plug is EXACTLY the same as the Deso (ND) W24ES-U even down to the stampings into the metal minus the Denso logo, and the fact that the ceramic is yellow and not white. So the ACCEL 142 IS THE ND W24ES-U As far as I am concerned the best plug ever made. Denso discontinued this plug about eight years ago for the new precious metal crap, which is useless to us in the motorcycles. Who cares that the new plugs last 100,000 miles, not in a bike they don't.

Not in cars either. The "100,000 mile iridiums" the factory put in my Chevy went south at about 35k miles.

So why pay so much for plugs that do not give you the advertised advantage. Now here is an important point about gapping your plugs. The plug on the right is gapped correctly while the plug on the left is gapped WRONG. I usually change my plugs at the beginning of each season.

one thing i did notice is the ability to idle off choke more quickly...it used to want to die when taken off choke and 20 secs of fiddling kept it going....not now....i put 65 miles on it today and the bike ran flawlessly....not a single hiccup and not a single leak from anywhere since i put the head back on 100 miles ago....fuel consumption does seem better via the tank visual....for the same price, i will keep buying the accel's versus the ngk's....thanks for the tip otto.......

otakar wrote:

So why pay so much for plugs that do not give you the advertised advantage. Now here is an important point about gapping your plugs. The plug on the right is gapped correctly while the plug on the left is gapped WRONG. I usually change my plugs at the beginning of each season.

hey otto, whats the way to keep the curve on the gap?

The way I do it is that I open the probe in the bend using a KD #2327 tool and than bend it farther in at the base. Than I bend just the tip down using the same tool. The KD tool has the right gauges on it and gos from .040 all the way to .080 The tool only costs a couple of $ and is simple to use. Who did you buy your ACCEL plugs from? I found the best price at Summit Racing at $2.25 each. By the way, the #143 plug is equivalent to the W22ES-U and is the next step hotter. That is the plug used on the KZ650 and KZ1300. I love these plugs and I have had much better results with them than the NGK plugs. I find them to make the engine run much smoother than most other plugs. I just ordered two dozen more for reserve. I don't want the same thing to happen to me like last time when Denso discontinued them and I had to go back to the junk NGK.

I bought some of the newer (but now also discontinued) Denso W24ES-ZU plugs that have the small platinum tips. The ground probe tapers to a much smaller tip though which means that the "U" grove is much smaller and a lot less effective. I will stay with these more "Primitive" yet tried and tested plugs. I started using them back in 1978 and still have found nothing better. so from now on I am staying with the Denso W24ES-U / ACCEL #142 and the .060 Gap. It seams to be the magic combination.

I have to say, in cars at least, the worst plugs I've ever tried were the Bosch platinums. In at least two cars I wasted time and money playing with those. They cost twice as much and only lasted a 1/4 of the miles. In an old dodge, I put in the cheapest bubble-pack Champions and got nearly 100,000 miles out of them. The Bosch lasted somewhere around 20,000.

In an old Datsun, they barely lasted a week before one then two crapped out. Everyone kept telling me they were the best (this was back in the '80's), so I thought I must have gotten the two in a million that were bad. Then others staratede going dead. After I switched back to the cheap NGK or ND (don't remember which), never had a problem again.

By the way I just finally pulled out some NGK's from my daily beater gpz550 after 10 years. They still looked good, but the electrodes were rounded off a bit and the gap was near .035". It started at .026", so I guess that's about .001 per year for me. (Not sure on the mileage.)

I had the exact same problem with BOSH plugs when I tried them in my Jaguar. I also had the same problem with a BOSH Oxygen Sensor. I replaced 3 and they kept on going bad. I than put in another brand and all my problems went away. My neighbor had the exact same problem. My other neighbor who owns a 5 bay repair garage, wouldn't touch a Bosch part if you gave it to him. Today some spark plugs can cost as much as $20+ EACH. Why? My brother thought he was giving me a great birthday present about 14 years ago when he bought me a set of the Bosch plugs which I believe cost him about $7 each back than. They only lasted about a month if that long. The funny part is that the Jaguar took the same plugs as my bikes. $42 for plugs 14 years ago was staggering as far as plugs went, when most plugs still cost about a Dollar or so.

otakar wrote:

The way I do it is that I open the probe in the bend using a KD #2327 tool and than bend it farther in at the base. Than I bend just the tip down using the same tool. The KD tool has the right gauges on it and gos from .040 all the way to .080 The tool only costs a couple of $ and is simple to use. Who did you buy your ACCEL plugs from? I found the best price at Summit Racing at $2.25 each. By the way, the #143 plug is equivalent to the W22ES-U and is the next step hotter. That is the plug used on the KZ650 and KZ1300. I love these plugs and I have had much better results with them than the NGK plugs. I find them to make the engine run much smoother than most other plugs. I just ordered two dozen more for reserve. I don't want the same thing to happen to me like last time when Denso discontinued them and I had to go back to the junk NGK.

i got mine from summit also....

When I first discovered ND plugs was in 1978 when I was overseas in Iwakuni Japan. There was a Kawasaki dealer just outside the back gate of the base in town who talked me into them. He told me that they are much better than NGK. I never went back to NGK after that. I was hooked for life. The reason Kawasaki used NGK was because they were the cheapest thing that would do the job, but right in their manual they show the ND as the "other" plug. They were about one and half times as expensive as the NGK back than but I thought worth it.

Nothing more, nothing less... To spec as depicted...

I just installed the same coils and upped the gap a bit from .30 as you did.I haven't started her up yet but I assumed the gap should be a c--t hair larger too.Glad to hear your happy w/ the Dyna 2.2 coils.