How to Test a Spark Plug In One Minute

welcome back guys I'm the cheapskate and today I'm going to show you how to

test

your

spark

plug

s to see if they're still good or if they need to be replaced and I'm going to explain a little bit about the parts of a

spark

plug

and then I'm going to show you how to

test

them the test actually takes less than a

minute

if you have a multimeter, so a spark plug always has a number and this is an RC, why watch? on the bottom, that's the type of spark plug I need for my rotary cultivator that I used to tilt my garden every year and this one went bad so I went to the store and bought a replacement and this one actually shows a different number here BK r 5e but on the package it shows the champion RC 1 to YC, so it matches my original number.

This is just a different brand so it might have a different number but it will appear on the package whichever one matches if it has a spark plug. which has an R and the model number, which means there is a resistor inside the spark plug. Resistors are made to prevent it from interfering with things like a car radio or a camera, so many times they are not found in spark plugs that are used in garden equipment, so on a spark plug you will see that there is a piece of porcelain here , this porcelain police actually extends to the back of the spark plug and you can see it coming out at the tip back here enclosing the end of the piece that runs all the way down the middle, so there's a metal piece that goes from here to the tip and that piece has a tendency to break, crack and mar to test the ohms.

You need to change your multimeter to the ohm setting, all mine are indicated by the letters or H M on some multimeters is indicated by the upside down horseshoe symbol or Omega if you are familiar with the Greek alphabet and I like the 20k setting, like this that anything between 10 and 20 K is fine, if you don't have 20 K, you can always go higher and now we're going to test these plugs, so to test the resistance of a plug using the homemade setup, you're going to touch one. of the wires to this end of the spark plug and remember I said there is a piece of metal that goes through the entire center of the spark plug and there is a resistance inside the piece of metal and then the other end of the plug has this A little tip: this tip is where I want to touch my other wire, so I have a wire on the bottom down here and a wire on the top and you actually need to touch the top of that piece, not the side, to get a reading accurate so I'm going to put my leads together to start and you'll see I get a reading and then it goes to zero which tells me that my multimeter is working properly so I know that my battery isn't dead and there's nothing else. wrong, okay, actually I'm going to use the side of this piece down here because it keeps the whole spark plug from turning and then I'm going to touch the top part up here.

All the ohm readings I mentioned are actually in thousands, so when I say 6 ohms, I mean 6 thousand ohms, you'll see I get a reading of 6 ohms, exactly anything between 5 and 15 ohms is pretty normal for a spark plug. Made for a small engine like most things used. For your lawn equipment at home, what you shouldn't get is a reading anywhere else on this spark plug, so if I touch any of these other parts you shouldn't get any resistance. If you got resistance here, that would mean something is wrong. The metal shaft is either coming into contact with this piece or somehow seeping through the porcelain getting here, indicating that it is now a bad spark plug, so we shouldn't find any resistance anywhere else on it. the spark plug, except for the metal tip. piece here now that we know it's good, it was new.

I'm going to try this old one that I pulled out of my rotary tiller, so again I'm going to start here and go to the top and touch it. tip of this spark plug and I'm not getting any readings, that means something between here and here is broken, it could be the blown resistors or there's a crack in the metal piece or a crack in the insulation, but we know that this spark plug is no longer there. It's not good because he didn't give us any reading. One thing to be careful about is that if you have an old, dirty spark plug, it could have carbon buildup, so take a wire brush and clean this spark tip. spark plug or you can also spray some brake cleaner to make it nice and clean.

Spark plugs with resistors generally have a higher ohms reading than plugs without a resistor, which is why this particular plug has an R, so we know why. We have a reading of 5 or 6 ohms if it didn't have a resistor. We would have a reading closer to 1 or 2 ohms if your spark plug has a resistor and it reaches the 15 ohm range it could be. a sign that your spark plug is starting to misfire anywhere between the 5 and 15 ohm range on a small engine style spark plug with a resistor inside should be able to be used if you don't have a resistor you're looking for anywhere from 1 to 5 ohms I hope you found this video helpful.

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