Renix spark wires and coil arcing?

Old plug wires on my 1989 renix were arcing like crazy, bought new duralast gold wires (yeah probably not the best lol), pulled the old autolite plugs and put in cleaned and gapped (.35-.40) champions out of my parts motor, pulled the coil off and cleaned the contacts, then put it all back together.
Ran alot better and had a little more power, but after driving it started having that misfire feel at idle like it had before with the old wires. Looked under the hood at night and saw that #4 cylinder wire was faintly arcing at the bottom of the plug and one of the wires to 5 or 6 looked like it was arcing off the dipstick tube. What im more concerned about is it looked like there were arcs off the coil too
Anything i could try to fix it?
Thanks in advance

make sure your wires are on all the way. i had a few that i thought where on and they where not.

You get what you pay for.

Once a plug starts arcing over, it leaves a carbon path in the spark plug boot that will continue to arc. My best recommendation is to clean the ceramic on the plugs and get a new set of wires. You can try to clean the silicone boot with some lacquer thinner and a Q-tip and then use dielectric grease, but I wish you luck.

old_man said:

Once a plug starts arcing over, it leaves a carbon path in the spark plug boot that will continue to arc. My best recommendation is to clean the ceramic on the plugs and get a new set of wires. You can try to clean the silicone boot with some lacquer thinner and a Q-tip and then use dielectric grease, but I wish you luck.

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Interesting. No idea if I ever had that problem.

OK, moving on, since this is Renix that is notorious for ground issues I would first get an ohm meter and verify the engine is SOLIDLY grounded, as well as everything else sensor wise. Repair as needed. The arcing may be the spark having a hard time finding the ground since you said it is jumping to the dipstick which is near the block ground wire? It could be grounding through burned oil and grease on the surface of the block due to a bad ground contact on the block by the dip stick?

I would install new quality spark plugs, your used ones may have issues. The gap should be .035, not .040

Check to see that the plug wires are not crossed to the wrong plugs!!!!

And make sure the wires are actually clipped on the plugs, and check the wires with an ohm meter to see if they are damaged internally.

IIRC our wires are about 1000 ohms per foot of resistance new.

Make sure your hands are clean and the plugs ceramic outside is clean enough to eat off of when installing them!!!!!

Jeep Driver said:

You get what you pay for.

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I am a cheap old bastard, I usually get far more than I pay for, LMAO!!!party1:

90xj06 said:

make sure your wires are on all the way. i had a few that i thought where on and they where not.

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Yep, that is far too easy to do!!!! Even for the best of us.

Ecomike said:

Make sure your hands are clean and the plugs ceramic outside is clean enough to eat off of when installing them!!!!!

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this might be pushing it a bit-- should be clean enough for the ex-wife to eat off.