TLewis4095

Final results with the Heads/Cam MN6 C6:

Baseline w/NGK TR55's: 427RWHP

Pulstar Pull #1: 432RWHP

Pulstar pull #2: 435RWHP

In conclusion, the Pulstar's showed a potential improvment in the Stock C6 if we would have solved the spark-knock issue (wider gap may have done that) & the Pulstar's showed real improvment with the Heads/Cam car. The heads cam car showed improved A/F ratio from the plugs alone (there was NO spark knock contrary to what we expected after the stock test) as the tune was slightly rich with the NGK's & turned to almost ideal with the Pulstar's with no tuning changes.

The percentage of gain would have been right in line with the manufacturer's claims on a stock non-tuned car as most come from the factory on the rich side. Where the surprise came was on the Heads/Cam/Tune car. Although the gains were small, they were on par with some other bolt ons for the price.

So in closing, we would say they are worth it depending on the application. We do need to do more testing on some passenger cars that would be more the companies target market. But under what we did here with controlled conditions, they do make more power on the rich A/F cars we tested.

Tracy Lewis
Owner
RevXtreme, Inc.

fergy flyer

Tracy, Chris, JP and the rest of the crew at RevXtreme,

Thanks for allowing me to be part of the Pulstar test.

I'm really impressed with your facility and the quality of the work that I saw. If anyone is within 100 miles of Tampa and you have an LS powered vehicle, RevXtreme should be on your short list for places to go for mods or even routine service.

I was suprised at the Dyno results, and no I didn't have 87 octane. LOL. I guess I just got lucky enough to have one of the weaker LS2's. I've got a couple 1/4 mile passes and the times range from 12.6-13.0, and the speed ranges from 113-110. Dyno's don't win races, although if I would have gotten a 350 or 360 pull I'm sure I would feel different about the dyno results.

My thoughts on the tune are that Chris got it exactly right. I just wanted a tune to quicken the throttle response, lean up the fuel mixture to where it should be and make the car feel better and a few more hp is the bonus. Well you pegged what I wanted exactly. It feels like a different car. It's alive. I looked at the dyno graph and I have more torque down low, a higher hp peak and more hp all through the range. As a bonus, I cheked my mileage on the way down and got 28.1mpg. On the way home I got 29.7. Same route as I drove coming down and I was playing with the throttle more to see what it felt like going home.

I know I'll drive 90 miles each way just to get my oil changes done at your shop. A good mechanic is to a car what a doctor is to a person. The list of mods that I gave JP will go on the car in February to March, after I see what I have left from paying the taxman.

Thanks again.
Chuck Ferguson

Vetteinplano

I just went back and read the posts from the "nay-sayers" from the original post.

So they did add power in a modified car..... 9 hp.

6Speeder

Thanks for doing the test.

Again, the Pulstars were developed to give additional MPG, not HP, so gaining even 9 HP is a bonus.

Please continue monitoring MPG, and keep us informed.

TLewis4095

Will do. We spent the entire day on this test session & being a busy shop to begin with it was difficult to set a whole day aside, but there are now more questions to be answered then when we started following the first threads. We need to test these in other motors & other cars & try and follow fuel economy as well.

The plugs sure do make a differance in the burn & thus the A/F ratio on cars that are on the rich side from the factory, which almost all are, these plugs do as claimed. I do feel a good tune will do more for the corvette & performance crowd, but for the market as a whole, I expect they will give the average consumer better fuel economy and can pay for themselves with that alone.

We are all in agreement here at the shop that we would not use these in a FI application, but they are not intended for that so that should be a non-issue.

It was a very educational day to say the least, and with the conditions of each run duplicated as close as possible in our climate controlled dyno room, I'd say these test are the most accurate done to date w/out tuning the cars for the plugs.

nmcoyote

Tracy - since my car was run at 5000 ft, do you think it was likely running very rich and that the results I got were a result of significantly better combustion in the thin air? The Enerpulse folks tell me they don't get significant gains with turbocharged vehicles at this altitude, but see very significant gains with normally aspirated cars. I am still convinced my car runs a lot better with them than before. I have been through 3 or 4 tanks of gas am noticing more performance gains than gas mileage improvement, but then I have had my foot in it a lot more since I put the plugs in.
chuck

TLewis4095

Would make sense to me, we saw improvement in both cars A/F....the plugs must be helping the combustion event to burn quicker.

6Speeder

I dyno'd my C5 at sea level and in Albuquerque, SAE HP was the same and the A/F was very close. As our motors use a MAF sensor to monitor the mass of the air, they compensate for the lack of O2 in the thin air very well, you don't run richer here, just slower

C5pilot

Tracy, thanks for taking the time to perform these tests, it was very generous of you. It'll be interesting to see how other cars respond in the future and if possible see if the new plugs can squeeze anything extra out of a tune.

Perhaps they're worth a look for my 3.0 V6 Jag. I'd try anything to make it more responsive or boost it's limited AWD mileage. Love the car, hate the hesitation.

Thanks again.

boosted_z06

Those test results are useless

1. Dyno has a margin of error, the results are within that so cannot for fact claim that bit of increase was due to plugs, ECM adapting, not using part throttle or margin of dyno error.

2. Of course the car would improve, the more time at WOT only the more the ECM adapted.

3. scary people would even consider taking a plug designed to be at let's say 0.35 and open them to a 0.60 for its common knowledge a gap cannot be +/- .004 of that the plug was designed to for it changes the shape of the spark flame.

4. The ECM would adapt to knock no matter what is done with the sparkplug.

Making marketing claims of a whopping 6 - 9 HP for pricetag of $200 for those plugs, well add the Corvette tax but in the real world that 9 hp for most street driving will never be seen.

Have a engine problem ?
want to guess what GM would say as to warranty when they see those plugs being used

TLewis4095

Our intent was to disprove the claims as baloney. Those that followed our intial threads saw we were as skeptical as anyone else , maybe even more so. We publicly challenged the company to let us do an independant test in our climate controlled enclosed dyno, I am not aware of many others in the country that are open to the public. To ur surprise the company not only took the challenge, but sent us 2 sets at no cost pre-gapped where they wanted them. We did not try different gaps & if you read are complete post-by-post report while testing, (we devoted an entire day to this and put aside customer cars & paying tunes to do this) and we looked at far more than RWHP. We data logged everything and the changes were there plain & simple. We came away with more questions than answers, but the entire team here that participated are convinced they do work as advertised. Not for a power adder, but for more efficient combustion resulting small power gains & increased fuel economy. We did not do this test to convince the nay-sayers that they are wrong, only to show the corvette community the results of as careful of a test as we think could be performed on a dyno. When we can fit in more time for additional testing we will do more with different types of vehicles & engines. Our results deffinately show they are well worth a closer look.

glass slipper

Exactly where is the controlled fuel economy tests to allow you to make claims of increased fuel economy...I read the thread and must have missed it. Also, I agree with boosted_z06, 8 HP is within the range of error for the dyno and would be considered technically insignificant. Sorry, but I came to a completely different conclusion than you...when GM/Ford/Chyrsler/Honda/Toyota et al start using these plugs, I'll become a believer. I'm sure they have tested them in their search for that last tenth of a mile per gallon and would jump at the chance to improve fuel economy by one MPG. The only reason they use platinum plugs is to give 100,000 mile spark plug change intervals, not better performance/MPG.

6Speeder

Why are you jumping on TLewis for taking the time to do a good dyno test of these plugs? He didn't do an economy test on them and didn't claim a gain, the company making them do. As for GM using them, that's what Pulstar hopes for in the future, but right now they're just in the R&D phase.
BTW: It was the Pulstar test engineer who suggested regapping the plugs bigger. And, yes, it does change the spark kernal. That was what he wanted.

nmcoyote

6Shooter - I agree with you. Two proverbs come to mind:

There are none so blind as those, that will not see.

and

No good deed goes unpunished.

Props to Tracy for foregoing the revenues from a day's worth of shop work and taking a chance on upsetting his customers to put this question to rest. Too bad the herd of the naysayers that jumped on me and now Tracy aren't men enough to at least thank Tracy for his efforts, much less admit there might be something to these plugs after all.

CodyC6

I'm more impressed that a shop was willing to do the testing, and a mfg that offered up their product to be tested. Thanks to both.

As for changing the gaps on future tests, coming from forced induction setups myself, changing gaps to find the right setup is common practice. And, it was the mfg that suggested it too. I wouldn't be surprised if the supercharge/turbo guys here run larger gaps in their plugs too.

CHASLS2

We need more shops like Rev Extreme to do testing. I'm gald they did the test.

AORoads

Inconsistent logic. You say: "They" would jump at the chance to increase mpg by 1 mpg. But the only reason "they" use platinums isn't perf or mpg?

So, there's a better plug out there that gives more mpg, but won't last 100K miles?

Nooo, as a compromise betw. cost, longevity, mpg, etc., "they" use platinums. And very likely, there is nothing out there that is sufficiently cost-effective (either initially, or because it wears out, say, every 5K miles and thus costs the consumer/buyer) AND gives significant mpg increases. Pulstar, included.

I applaud a separate, tuner shop, taking the time and initiative (and we should all read that as COST, cost to them of NOT doing other, paying business) to answer our questions of Pulstar plugs and the original thread and poster.

While it may not be THE definitive and LAST answer on the topic, it is a far cry from Pulstar's own dyno tests, a user's "test" on the street, or any other such nonsense. TLewis's tests go a long way in establishing the merit of the plugs, good or bad.

And frankly, to me, it's not worth it. But the test results sure beat some "magic-in-a-bottle" or some of the claims of catback exhaust, CAI, headers, rears, etc. Not to mention other, SEAT of the Pants results.....

TLewis4095

Or the "Turbonator"!

Thanks for the kind words guys.

glass slipper

I didn't jump on TLewis for taking the time to do a good dyno test of Pulstar plugs. I asked a simple question (which still hasn't been answered), agreed with another member, and respectfully disagreed with TLewis' conclusion in the absence of hard data to support the increased MPG assertion. And TLewis did make a claim of a gain in economy:
Also, the plugs are being sold to the general public as we speak and have been for what...2 years? I would say (and hope) that they are out of the R&D phase...unless they are using the consumer to do their R&D.

I applaud TLewis for taking the time to perform the tests on these plugs, I just happen to disagree with the conclusions he came to. Also, don't think TLewis lost out on this deal...he got a lot of good press out of this not to mention the good will he promoted to the Corvette Forum which will translate into more business in the future. If he's a good businessman (and in my opinion, he appears to be very good with the added bonus of being good at what he does), he calculated these benefits and chalked it up to advertising. Don't mistake this for sour grapes on my part...I don't own a business, but I am a firm supporter of free enterprise and our capitalistic society. I hope he reaps 10 times the business this one day cost him...anybody out there busting their butt to make a living deserves all the business that comes their way.

glass slipper

More like inconsistent comprehension on your part...that isn't what I said, not even close. Your last sentence doesn't even make sense.