FAQ: Hesitation, Stutter(Studder), Shudder, Stumbling, on Acceleration/Load

AA wrote:

Quote :

Actually, spotting arcing is easy. First, you have to do it in a very dark garage, or at night in a dark area. Open hood, take off the plastic engine cover, start the car, get out and look at the engine. If your wires are compromised you'll see flashes of blue along them. Those are often called "coronas" and they are the electrical energy leaking out the wires due to insulation breakdown or other electrical problems. Good wires don't have coronas.

Normally, this works, but on our supercharged engines, it's not that simple. My wires worked fine at idle and with most light to medium acceleration - engine ran perfect. But when you get into boost, the PCM uses a hotter set of spark tables to fire the plugs. This extra voltage will cause arcing through cracked or worn insulation, whereas the normal spark might not,

This is why taking the SC belt off is a way to diagnose the problem. The engine never goes into boost, so the hotter spark isn't delivered, and the sputter doesn't occur. Easy way to diagnose bad wires after ruling out plugs. It could be a coil, but those are more expensive to replace.

How old are these wires from the GTP? How many times were they removed from the plugs? Were they removed properly (you can destroy the boots easily with just a few swaps)? Did you swap all the wires, or just some? They should be replaced as a set. How do you know the old ones on your car are still good?

N/A wires will not work for our SC engines. Are you certain the GTP had the correct wires?

Thanks, Aaron. I did not know about the change in ignition under boost.

That said - if the wires are arcing non-boost you *know* you have a problem. Ignition does not have to be -that- high energy to see the arcing. If the wires are bad, you''ll see arcing on conventional ignition systems too, no problem.

By the way I read your post about slipping the s/c belt off, and 'filed' it for use some other time. (this ignition stuff is not my issue, I installed Magnecor wires some time ago and have not had *any* issues since...) Your further explanation helps!

Albertj

AA wrote:

Maybe take the other wires off the GTP and move over to the Riv, replacing even the wires you thought were good.

10.3 mm would be overkill. 8 mm are big enough. 10.3 mm should work fine though, but no performance advantage from paying extra.

I would, but the problem is I forgot which wires I replaced and they all look the same. I'd just about need to do all of them to be sure I cover all of them.

I would go 8 mm but apparently ZZP doesn't have 8 mm wires. 10.3 mm is the smallest they offer. Do you know of somewhere I can order 8 mm wires for the 3800 specifically (I checked intense and they only had OEM AC Delco wires and 3800 Performance only has the 10.4 mm $120 wires)? My question was also in regards to what exactly larger spark plug wires do exactly.

Thicker silicon insulation only. No need to spend $100.00 on wires in my opinion.
I bought stock size wires for my car a couple thousand miles ago and replaced plugs. Runs very good.

Given the differences in price being factory wires are $60 and overkill aftermarket wires ar $100 I'd think 8 mm wires would be $80 and I'd pay $20 more for that if that were the case. I just don't know where to find them.

Aha! How about these? $10 cheaper than factory wires!
Taylor 8mm wires

$60 shipped. Seems like a good price, and they are for the S/C 3800. What do you all think, wouldn't these be easily worth that?

Yes, I use Taylor on my High Perf. motorcycle engines and have always been pleased.
I wish I saw those before I bought the ones I have.

Also, Magnecor has 7, 8 and 8.5 mm wires for the Riviera.
Try www.magnecor.com

I looked there, but I couldn't find prices so easily. They look like nice wires but without any idea where or how to buy I can't well get them. I'll look into ordering those Taylor wires.

That's what I would do. The price is right and the quality is good, from my experience with their MC wires.

To those of you reading this thread: Good ignition wires are needed to get all the electrical energy from the coils to the plugs without interfering with the Riv's persnickety ECU. It's kind of like tires - good tires help ensure that all the engine power gets to the road in a way that pushes the car where the driver wants to go.

The "trap" is that one can spend a lot of time on this, probably because wires are, actually, fairly easy to make and fairly easy to sell with all sorts of (wild) claims, and most people don't have the knowledge or equipment to experimentally test the claims. The sick trick here is that if your wires are failing, whatever you replace them with will seem to be great! Most people take that as empirical proof that one or another set of wires is 'better.' It's a weak proof. No measurement, no testing, no control group, no analysis after 10-100-1000 hours or whatever.

If you want the potential overall performance of the Riv under your control, you need a good set of wires - and "better" wires won't really help. The OE wires are fine. Taylor wires are fine. Magnecor wires are fine. Taylor and Magnecor make/have made for them their own wire, and they are similar in having real spiral wound conductors instead of the carbon/latex coated fiberglass in the OE wires. A dealer with a tester will tell you that new Taylor or Magnecor wires test bad, which will be wrong - most dealers do not have equipment that properly tests the inductive effect of the spiral wound conductors. THey just measure DC resistance, which with the inductively wound wires id very low.

ONe other thing - the energy from the ignition will break the OE wires down after so many thousand hours of engine operation. The OE wires are not bad but they are different. When the OE wires break down, you see the sort of difficulties Shintsu is having. It is not a cause for shame, and really it does not make *that* much sense to spend a lot of time on it. One fixes this situation with new wires. The Taylor and Magnecor wires will last longer due to construction than the OE wires, but the OE wires are fine. The wires to watch out for are those that claim to boost horsepower, have multiple cores, or have shoddy construction like aluminum end connectors instead of stainless steel or brass.

Good luck with your wire hunting.

Albertj

Today I'm driving along and some whore in her Escape thinks she's going to whip in front of me after tailgating me for the past two or three miles. I decide not. Nail it in the Riv and at about 85 mph the Riv is just kinda hanging out - not really going much faster and I've seen it smoothly accelerate up to 90+ mph. I kept her from doing it but just barely. The day the Riv barely keeps a POS 200 hp V6 Escape from getting over means NEW WIRE TIME.

I came right home and ordered them damn wires - I don't think so! If this isn't the solution...well I guess I'll order the set of MSD Ignition coils for $150. Hopefully this does the trick though!

I forget, but you have looked at all the spark plugs, right? Are they all fresh?

Just wanted to be sure you changed out all 6 plugs. Hope the wires are it.

Oh, I think I see what you meant - as in were they replaced recently, not some 75-100k+ spark plugs. No they were recently put in so it should be running good, and did for some time until recently.

Wow, PFYC has great shipping. I bought the wires on Monday night and they came today just about 25 minutes ago. Weather is nice but I need to wash the car first - hasn't been washed for about a month and a half or more and has been driven through snow, ice, salt, and various other filth.

New wires are in place and the car is running well but I have not driven it yet. We'll see if it was the problem tomorrow. One of the wires did break when I took it off so that could be a source of some arcing.



I will say the back wires are damn long. Every wire they had was longer than my OEM wires. Does anyone have any comparison pics of someone who did a great job routing their wires? I pretty much routed the back ones just like OEM and the front ones were nice - my OEM wires were very long and had to be routed up in the front under that plastic piece next to the valve cover whereas these new ones are so short they plug in and don't need to be tucked away. The #6 wire was a PITA but after that they were considerably easier. I think I took a total of 3 minutes on the front wires whereas it was probably a good 5 minutes or so just for the #6 wire.

Just curious, are the front wires supposed to have those metal shields on them? All three of my back wires have them but none of the ones in the front did.

This pic shows how short those front wires are - love it!


Overall pleased with the little extra touch up under the hood and hoping this will solve my sputtering problem. If not...MSD coil packs!

The mismatched wire length means they can use 1 set of wires for many vehicles/engines. I always liked the results from the "universal" cut to fit wire sets, but they invite their own set of connection troubles and have to be crimped just right. It's always a PITA to deal with wires that are way too long...

I always liked OEM wires that are exactly the right size! At least Taylor are a reputable brand - hope they fix the problem.

The frontside wires are supposed to be fastened in a loom that's under the front valve cover. In your picture it looks like a black plastic bar on teh bottom edge of the cover, it is plainly visible.

Anyway, if you could look at it from the *side* instead of the top you'd see it has channels for the wires running the length.

I bet if you put the wires into the built-in loom then they will no longer be "too long."

Albertj

The PRJ wires (10.4 taylor/msd) I have were fine because they had a lot of retainers with them. There were 3 of one size and 3 of another size for the front and back. If you're in a similar boat with those wires, I'd grab some retainers for them.

This fixed the problem thanks again everyone.

I'm more referring to the back wires. They're not TOO big, just a little. They're not touching anything so no harm in a little extra play room from the wires. The front ones I pointed out were the exact right length. I said my OLD wires that I took off were too long and they were under that wire loom (I had to pry them out from under there). I know exactly what it is, mine has some sludge or oil or some crap under it and if it's supposed to pop off or something it sure wasn't going to come easily. These front wires are so short I don't need to tuck them away. Since it was such a pain to get the old wires out of that thing I didn't see much good reason to tuck them in there so I could fight with it again, espeically given these new wires are even bigger than the OEMs.

I ordered these from PFYC and specified that I have the 3.8 Supercharged motor from the drop down so these are precut for our motors (or at least the one in the GTP/Regal - I didn't think there was any real difference in the spark plug wires). I'll put it this way, when I measured their longest wire to the longest in the Riv, it was about 6-8" longer (visual estimate).

It's amazing though how dirty the wires get just from routing them around under the hood. They're not as super pretty shiny red as when I first got them, but it's not like that really matters. It's under the hood, who's gonna see it and even so who's going to go "OMG, you have dirty spark plug wires"? Oh, sorry I forgot - Travis would. But other than that who?

I see.

If at some point in the near future it's of interest, a little dishwashing liquid in water on a rag will get the wires clean again with a couple or three seconds of rubbing. That way there's less chance of the oil eventually breaking down the wire insulation and leading to arcing. If you want you can then wipe them down witl a little armorall or forever black or some other protectant... or not...

Also, I noticed when I got my Riv some of my spark plug wires were in black plastic wire loom, whcih I replaced when I replaced the wires.

Albertj

Yeah, I had some of that stuff but most of it was crinkly and falling apart. I didn't see much use in covering up good looking red wire with it, but I did take a strip off and put it on the front wire which is most likely to get warm/be near the radiator fans. Just as a sort of extra precaution, it's no where near either. I didn't really think that stuff served much purpose being it's just some plastic crap over the wire.

Shintsu wrote:

I ordered these from PFYC and specified that I have the 3.8 Supercharged motor from the drop down so these are precut for our motors (or at least the one in the GTP/Regal - I didn't think there was any real difference in the spark plug wires). I'll put it this way, when I measured their longest wire to the longest in the Riv, it was about 6-8" longer (visual estimate).

Nope. It means you got what Taylor lists as fitting the 3.8SC, which probably also fits 12 other V6 engines. They are not 'custom cut' for the 3.8SC.

Ah well, close enough. Better than those crappy universal "make it yourself" kits - it had instructions in there in case that's what you had. What a PITA I could imagine that being...

The tough thing about the "make it yourself" kits is crimping the terminals correctly. Terminals that are springy enough to work properly are tough to crimp properly without the right tools, because of the springiness of the metal.

Albertj

Background: Last week i changed out my transmission fluid (NOT a flush). i dropped the pan and replaced the filter and fluid (7qts). i even used the Dexron VI stuff at $8/qt.
I cant say i noticed a difference in how it shifted, but then again i wasnt trying to fix anything, it was just time for a change.

Problem: it is hard to describe, but it feels like a bad misfire. the RPM's will drop slightly and the car will buck a little. It only does it at moderate to WOT.
Except for the rare time when it decided to do it, the car runs fast as
ever. Sometimes i'll just be going around the neighborhood at
30mph/3000rpm, other times it happens at WOT/6000rpm. 99% of the time it shifts perfect and runs smooth.

My thoughts: first i figured a bad plug/wire, but it only happens sometimes, and my plugs are a month old. (wires are a year or so old and they are acdelco) Doesnt rule it out, i know.

I remember having this symptom before (almost 2 years ago) and on rare occasions it would be bad enough to throw a SES. The codes at the time were multi-cyl misfire and MAF low input.
I attributed the problem to a faulty MAF, but i never replaced it b/c the problem seemed to go away when the weather changed (colder).

i am really hoping it is not a sticky solenoid in the transmission, but it is an awful odd coincidence for this to be happening after the change.

I plan on scanning this next week to see what the MAF is reading when it bucks, but other than that i'm out of ideas. no SES light so far, and i cant always replicate the problem.

thanks for any insight,
Matthew