Written by ShoutGreen | 03 November 2006

During an interview, Robert Krupa, the inventor of the FireStorm spark plug, gave an insight into how he produced the first prototypes of his new spark plug. If you have some adequate soldering and building skills, why not have a go at producing your own, and maybe get more out of your car in terms of power and efficiency than you realised.

Krupa's interview with a Mr Robert Stanley:

"I was brought up by the NOS (Nitrous Oxide Systems) guys out in California. Their theory was a plug either works or it doesn't and there is no in-between. And I essentially found out that there is something special about spark plugs. I went through a 55-gallon drum
full of used grimy spark plugs.

I went through all of them very carefully and found that the older the plug the more the center electrode of the plug was worn all around so there was no edge. It took the shape of a small ball A half a ball to be exact - a dome. I figured well, if that's what it wants then why not start off with that shape and see what it does?

I took a brand new plug and filed it down to make it look like a dome and fired it and noticed it worked a little better. But I still had a problem with the ground side. So, I whacked the ground off and started putting different configurations of grounding electrodes on it. I held that together with toothpicks to make it easy to change them. And I put a half a loop on and it seemed to fire a little bit better.

Then I took the head off a screw and bashed it with a hammer until it took a dome shape. Then I took the other side and dimpled it creating a concave... an inverted dome really. I sat that dome very carefully on top of the electrode of the new plug that I had filed to accommodate it, then I put a half a ring over it for the negative electrode. I held all that together with toothpicks. And it started firing like crazy and I said, 'Hey! I've really got something here...' And after that I began looking for a prototype shop to make a set of super custom plugs."