New Best on Friday Night!
These are Autolite 5224 I believe. Do you think that is too hot of plug for my combo? I think I'm going to buy a new set of plugs and back the timing down a couple of degrees. I live on a lonely stretch of road. Maybe with the new plugs I could WOT through first and second on my road and kill it and coast into the driveway.
Thanks FABO for the help so far!
I don't use auto liters much and don't have a catalog for them. I did the cross reference, which is, at very best, somewhat close and it crosses to a Champion RC12YC. It may be the picture, but the tip looks very long, and I'm not a big fan of that, for a couple of reasons.
So, IMHO, you are close on heat range. When the tip is that far into the chamber, you have to account for a couple of things, like the tip being right directly in he path of the incoming fresh air fuel charge. To help keep from fouling, the plug manufacturers will make the same heat range plug ACT hotter. For marketing hype, they say their plugs have a "wider" heat range, which is to simply say they are keeping the tip hotter to stop fouling. Most of that is emissions crap, and CAFE standards and I don't give a tinkers damn about either. So like I said, I'm not a fan of that long nosed plug.
All that said, when you are reading the ground wire for timing, and you are using a long nosed plug like you are, you can run the heat line closer to the plug shell like you have it. I don't think you are that far off. It is difficult so see the minutiae that is all important in plug reading from a picture, but you are close enough for me to say it's time to start picking the fly poop out of the pepper. Get a very good quality plug reading tool, and learn to read plugs. It's simple really. Just know that all you want at WOT is a fuel ring at the bottom of the porcelain where it meets the shell about .060 wide. When you get good at reading plugs, you can make the fuel ring narrow up or widen out with a jet change, or with your air bleeds, or even emulsion. You will know when the ignition is down or going down. I used to be able to tell you when the ignition points were getting weak by looking at the plugs. Yup, I'm that old. Learn to read a plug. Then, once you have that down, you can get an air/fuel meter and work with it. In my world, the only thing that trumps a plug reading is looking at and reading piston tops and combustion chambers. That, and looking at the exhaust ports and headers.
Much fun stuff for you to learn, even if it is your hobby.
