On an off, I have been trying to dial in my motor the last few months.... but in all my racing days, I've never had a problem with plugs... tune was always close to being dead-on I guess.

Which lends me the question, my plugs are black, gas smell, its not oil, its from running rich.... I'm going to work it out, but in the interest of wanting to know if I have another problem.... does anybody have any experience to the effects of running a rich plug ? My motor is a bit choppy, especially at part throttle......kind of like if it was running on 7 cylinders.

Thus, if you ever found yourself running rich and potentially fouling your plugs.... exactly, how did your motor react ?

thanks for any insight.

theoretically, if it's too rich, it will drown out the spark. There will be too much fuel to burn, so it won't.

A "rich plug" isn't, in its own right, going to cause a problem. Clean it, put it back in, reuse. You really need to figure out why it is rich...

Also, check spark. There could be an issue or 2 with the spark on a single cylinder.

My understanding is that fouled plugs cause rough idle, low power, and worse gas mileage due to the weak spark. I've only experienced it on 2 stroke motors where sometimes they wouldn't even start and if they did, ran like crap. Just my $.02.

Matthew

Yea, what they said. I've had fouled plugs do that.

Is it running rich all the time, idle, part throttle?

If it's at WOT, have you done a WOT plug check?

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Yea, 2 strokes are differemt animals especially if you're running the fine wire plugs. When they foul a plug, it seems you can't even clean the plug to fix it.
Bet I've bought over a 1,000 2 stroke plugs.

with 2 strokes, I have found if you douse them in carb cleaner, brush them off, then heat them with a lighter, put them in, the little buggers usually fire right away.

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That works sometimes,depends on the motor.
Of course my 2 strokes were reving 19,800 so the plugs were critical.

Thanks for the input all.

I know why its rich and I am working that out with Mick....so the condition will be fixed.

I was most interested in how others had run if they were ever in a rich condition. My motor right now takes a few turns to light and then at part throttle its choppy.... I was just curious if this was A-typical for rich plugs.

I've been lucky enough in the past to never have a rich condition....in fact, past plugs were always clean as a whistle when I checked them. This is new, thus so is the result.... at least to me it is.

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Mine (LT1) lights on a half turn every time (stock). But it's really rich on startup (stinks up the garage even if i pull the car out in 5 seconds).

Hey Beach, my experiance with big cube sbc's most mail orded tuners have problems getting the tuning nailed. They don't see that many of them. But I think you have a good shot working with Mick getting the tuning dialed in.

Mine runs pig rich at startup and the plugs are covered in carbon deposits from burning oil. Lights up first time everytime, although I do have an MSD ignition box.