Recently, a company sent me a set of those new fangled forked spark plugs.  They wanted me to have their public relations expert and scientific engineer on our radio show so that together we could discuss the benefits of this new revolutionary spark plug.   I asked them to send me a set so that I might try them myself and have the opportunity to come to my own conclusions.

We decided to test these new fork spark plugs ourselves using equipment we had in the shop.  First we installed a new set of Champion spark plugs in my 90 Chevrolet S-10 Blazer's 4.3 liter engine.  We monitored the coolant temperature of the engine and hooked up two engine analyzers.  We ran tests that allow us to look at numbers that tell us how much electricity is sent to each plug, how much electricity is needed to maintain the spark and how long in milliseconds, the spark or burn lasted.

We ran three identical tests on both the new Champions as well as the forked plugs.  We had both engine analyzers hooked up at the same time, so we had a total of six test results.  All plugs were gaped the same, the engine temperature was the same, the quick rev of the engine was done the same each time by the same person.   Here's the results:

	Burn time in milliseconds	KV needed toMaintain the burn	KV needed toJump the gap
New Champions	1.86	1.66	18.1
New forked plugs	1.66	1.96	17.7

The coil must put out a lot of KV's to jump the gap of the plug, but once the bridge is there, the coil only needs to maintain enough KV's to cross the bridge and create the burn.  The best plug will provide you with the longest burn time using the least amount of electricity.  So decide for yourself which plug would you use?