Barnstormers New Zealand

As a younger person I didn’t really put much stock in the correct type of spark plug for my motorcycles. Correct thread size was of course important but this projected tip, non projected tip, appropriate heat range nonsense was not worthy of my time and any decision on what to use was based purely on cost – the cheaper the better, and free was excellent. Naturally I had a few disasters and as a slow learner the only thing I understood was that if I put a 3/4” reach plug in place of the 1/2” reach plug into my 70cc BSA Dandy 2 stroke that it would make the combustion space smaller thus upping the compression, make the ‘bang’ better and I would of course go faster. Or so the world would have had me believe. But in reality the bike was hard to start, didn’t run very well and the excess thread protruding into the cylinder carboned up and made plug removal difficult. Upon reflection I think that the root cause of my spark plug ignorance goes back even further to the youngster days of a very young McSnipper and the guiding light of Grampy McSnotty, a man who I had the utmost respect for and who was instrumental in the early days of my mechanical training.

Grampy McS was a man who had survived bankruptcy of the 1920s and the depression of the 1930s so everything to him had a value and a use, whether it be brand . . . → Read More: The Spark Plug Conundrum.