since the plugs dont fire like conventional plugs, a piggyback system tuned on regular plugs is simply incompatible. running it for 15 minutes or even ECU battery resets wont help

If get my hands on a RRM piggyback unit and get the chance to tune using pulstar plugs, I will make that alternative map available. But I still have to look into what is going to be involved. I may turn it over to Four Star Motorsports to do all the manual labour of tuning, they have the experience.

 

I actually tried letting it run for over 20 min, with no luck. I reset multiple times. No go.

Well evosoul, you are welcome to work on mine. I can give you directions to LA.

 

Greetings all, I must admit this review is a couple of weeks behind schedule, but recent developments needed to be addressed. I have started to write my review, and its pretty long. Before I post it I am going to clean up the spelling and grammer.

I will address
1 my performance finding on the dyno
2 fuel economy
3 ask and answer some questions around check engine light issues found by other forum users, specificly those utilizing piggyback units
4. where we go from here.

I should have the review up by Friday maybe Sunday, just a bit busy testing out some new donated hardware
(sunday update: having a bit of trouble with my server uploading some content, I will continue fighting with it to get it posted) I will post here when its finally ready

Cheers

 

I do have to applogize to you all for the delay in my final review. This time its all my bad, booked to many things all at once. hmm lets see, girlfriend aniversity stuff, Canada Day long weekend (well kinda), this review, having to watch the EVO X WRX show down on Top Gear. then back to the review... blah blah blah, oh ya work and life too.

One thing that has been on the front burner and has taken up most of my time is organizing stuff for a bodykit and working on a single exhaust class variant of my Dark Horse Exhaust project.. since I owe you all something for your patiences I will throw ya some meet to give you a heads up.

I will try to finish the review on my Holiday downtime. going thru 16 pages of notes is not easy...

 

That exhaust looks nice. Where did you take the picture? Is it in the bath tub?

 

I didnt take the photo this time. all my photos come out a bit getto, like the last time, remember what i used that last time to show case my dual exhaust project lol

 

thats one sweet lookin tip i beleive. and one clean fricken bathrub, lol

 

I bought these plugs and one broke when I tried carefully installing it yesterday. The place I bought it from, included a little guide specific for installing Pulstar plugs. They said to remove the foam/rubber piece inside the sparkplug socket, because the copacitor is located inside the resistor, making the resistor more fragile to horizontal shear. And thats exactly what happened to me, and I even removed the foam/rubber piece inside the sparkplug socket.

I called the company I purchased them from, and they said they will ship one out for me as an exchange, which is cool. (no headaches). But now I'm wondering if I should even bother with these things.. I tune Evo's using ECU flash. I wonder how these plugs will perform. Some say they can't take the heat, if they cause any problems, I don't want them. LOL

 

hi there amak87, just ensure the plugs you are installing, are the exact same size as the ones you are swapping out. SOmething that will be in my very super long review that I am trying to get done. Something I have said before, The spark plugs are of a decent heat range, but inside a evo engine the range falls slightly short.

Inspection of the plugs must occur at very very frequent intervals. in terms of the plugs sensitivity they are very fragile. now I have been ok with over 15 install and removal of the same plugs by Four Star Motor sports or my other garage, but extra care is needed with these plugs.

After your first 500 miles, inspect,
3000 miles inspect

and every 6000 miles just to insure the heat range is enough. Every evo owner I know drops the hammer once and a while, but as long as your not racing the car 24 /7 you should be fine.

enerpulse is in the works for a colder plug, but I will comment on that later.

I am 90% sure you will be fine with the plugs you currently have

 

Note I am posting this because I have gotten a few emails inquiring about it, I havent forgotten about the review, but its original fuller form is about 3 times bigger then what you see below, lol this is the shorten version, also have had the time to move the images onto my server. So I will clean this up tomorrow the day after.. If there are spelling mistakes, sorry, I will clean that up as well. in the mean time, you can soak up some of my thoughts, for those looking for a point blank up or down pump or dump, your not going to get that here, the situation is complicated. which i explain below. take what you will from it. lol I need a break, if i hear the world pulstar one more time, I am goin to scream from all the typing i had to do lol enjoy.


So here we are, about 3 months after we began. Testing these spark plugs honestly has been a very difficult ordeal. Not in the installing, not in the operation of the car, but in the actual results. What I mean is, there have been odd hiccups that were unforeseen and most certainly not easy to remedy. But before we get on with the review lets run thru the disclaimer. I EVO_SOUL, (yes I was born with that name) certify that I am not an employee or agent of evolution.net or Enerpulse. I do not profit in anyway thru the endorsement or writing off of any products mentioned in this article. In the spirit of disclosure I will note that front the begin Enerpulse was very forthcoming with answers to my questions my last contact with them was back in April / May and I have basically been on my own working with my own team to work thru the issues and come out with more answer then questions. Enerpulse freely supplied pulstar spark plugs which I have used for this testing. I will attempt to be as un bias as possible now that I have disclosed the important bits, and believe me, if one aspect needs a stern kick in the rocks, trust me I will hit the mark.

All that said, lets start from the beginning.
~~~~~ From the beginning, The Pitch.

I phrased this very simply, If someone at a gas pump, offered you 5, 10 or 20 cents off per litre or even gallon, what would you say? Would you say sure, why not. Or would you be suspicious? Would you think it was a scam? Would you look around for a guy with a shady looking trench coat? Would you take a deep breath of fresh air and attempt to detect the faintest smell of snake oil? Yes Snake oil? If you ever did a search of pulstar I am sure you ran into a thread somewhere that has one forum guy saying snake oil and another disputing it, calling it the real deal, and I am pretty sure there are more snake oil people then thru believers too. Its a human condition, being suspicious that is. When something is too good to be true, generally it is, or there is a catch. So which is it, a cheap gimmick or is it valid science.
Well I hate to get into the middle of the debate, but after months of testing, almost 10,000 km of on the road use, I am going to have to come down on the side of the real deal guys. Simply put, this is the best innovation for spark plugs for some time. And looking at the history of the spark plugs in the last 20 years, there were alot of products that failed to live up to their stated claims.
Beleive me, I had to drag this plugs in front of every reputable mind I knew, University Students / Profs to vet the science, that came back valid. Tuning Junkies that tune turbo charged rides in their sleep, they deemed it worthy of further study. Others in the industry simply said, an idea like that is worth a fortune, not millions, but Billions. When they would ask “ who makes it” I would tell them Enerpulse? And they would say, “who” Expecting one of the big two like NGK, DENSO, giants. And thats a big problem right there “ENER-WHO” A new comer in any market is always gonna have a rough time gaining respect. Enerpulse I believe has been around for a while with the directhits plug but this is the first strong push into the big leagues. But anyone can come up with initial capital making a million plugs and try to market them. The future of enerpulse and their patented technology is how well they work to refine and improve their product.

~~~~~ The uphill challanges and the Blitz approach
In terms of spark plugs, NGK and Denso are king, the advantages they have are Name/ Respect, Volume / cliental, Product reliability, Diversity – specialty plugs. The advantages that the these and other well known manufacturers have are enormous. The biggest thing Enerpulse has going for it is the patent. The right to make this type of spark plugs. Now NGK and Denso can come up with a work around to utilize the same type of design but these things are never easy, and a lawsuit or potential of just isn’t worth it, so in the mean time, they stand back and wait for a stumble / failure. Is it possible? Well lets examing the game plan Enerpulse is following.
Its the Blitz, aggressive punt rush, and Hail Mary Passing all in one package. With such an advanced spark plug matched with even more advanced ignition systems that vary from car manufacture to manufacturer, its impossible to make your product perfect. This is something I will touch on in my conclusions, but for Enerpulse it will be trial and test method for their product. Their first wave of product product release have a limited heat range with a one size fits all for plugs within a certain NGK temp range. They send out the plugs and see which ones work, and which ones come home in a bodybag. In some ways though this is a good thing, your getting your customers to test out the plug and collect data on almost every type and year of vehicle out there, what is there, 10,000’s of thousands of cars going back 40 years , all those varients, all those, configurations. Having a customer return a plug because of a common problem along certain car lines allows their R&D team to make improvements in the next generation of plug. On the flip side, no customer is going to like the idea of having guinea pig stamped on this forehead. But allowing a moneyback offer takes alot of the bad taste away. In some ways its a win win for everyone. This is one of few situations where the shoot and ask questions later system actually works.

~~~~ The short comings of the current first generation of pulstar
These plugs are only rated for naturally aspired engines and maybe some light boost stock configured cars. If you want to throw heavy boost at this bad boy of a spark plug, your sadly mistaken. And here is the reason why. One reason is going to be because of the limited heat range available. The more aggressive the rig, the more specific you must be with everything you put into it. And that goes for having the correct spark plug heat range. When you look at your options with denso and NGK you have every temp plug under the sun. If you don’t have the right type of plug and your plug start hitting temps above 850’C you can bet your bottom dollar that your plug is going to start to melt. Doesnt matter what you have in their pulstars, densos, or NGKs, the wrong plug means game over. Then its only a manner of time.
When I spoke to Frank at FourStar about this he was excited, being a Canadian Rally Champion and all time points grand master, you kinda know a thing or two about possible competitive advantages. All that excitement turned to somewhat disappointment. Here you have a great idea and you don’t have anything for the serious tuner. This was serious, its not easy to get Frank Excited about anything, and for a brief moment there was something there. Now Enerpulse has promised that a colder plug is on the way, but even though, there are some doubts on if even that can meet the standard of FourStar Motorsports. Here is where I get a little critical (well if you haven’t noticed already). Heat range is just one factor that goes into it, is the ground or even metal used in the plug construction going to be strong enough to stand up to heavy boost and excessively high temps. The metals used are Inconel on the center electrode. Steel on the ground strap and shell. Close your eyes, and think of what it must be like inside then engine of a 1000 - 600 hp STI WRX that works on day in and day out, and oh ya from time to time the rides that go even above that. Now of course this is a very small minority of potential customers, but there will be some that want to use the technology for racing advantages. Its something that Enerpulse would need to take into consideration.
So we have talked about compatibility and we have gone over Boost, but what about the Mitsubishi Lancer 2008+ 2.0L

~~~~~~~~~~ Enter the Mitsubishi Lancer 2008 2.0 GTS

I came into this with guarded but moderately high expectations, and to be honest, minus a few semi serious problems or set backs here and there, all in all everything I setout to test came back within expectations.

For my testing, I operated the car for 10000km with numerous spark plug inspection, making not of any burn characteristics on the plug that would be out of the norm.

1. In terms of visual inspection. No defects or unusual burn or wear occurred.
2. In terms of engine fault codes. No misfire codes occur, One pending or minor code did occur and was captured by my camera phone for about 5 km and then disappeared on its own while in transit. This code remained set in memory. Code P0031 HO 25 Heater Control Circuit bank 1 sensor 1. After consulting with a few experts, and explaining the situation, they do not think it is something serious on a scale of 1 to 10. The fault could be a result many things. And since it has to do with a O2 Sensor which is after the cumbusion process but before the Cat sensor. It doesn’t not mean the plugs are malfunctioning. The fact that the code came up and went out on its own doesn’t add up to much. The code is not a hard code mean its not something fatal.
Now on a semi side now, I should address the fact that many out there who have used this spark plug have encountered check engine lights and poor performance. One specific situation is the use of these spark plugs in conjuction with the RRM piggyback, this will result a check engine light for sure. Unfortunately I do not have a piggyback unit at this time to verify this error. But since the piggyback pushes the map and possibly ignition timing, it is entirely possible that the changes maybe in the wrong direction. That said, it is also entirely possible to use the piggyback unit to bring the pulstar plugs more inline with favourable timings and maps. More on this later.
3. In terms of dyno, a consistant performance gain of TQ were made using pulstar plugs at the 0.030” setting. 2.5% gain in tq on a CVT in low rpm and 3.5% for the manual at peak Please note that Mitsubishi manual states the default configuration is between .031” to .028” The use of higher gaps yield more performance but also a more unstable running idle.
4. In terms of fuel economy a fuel savings of 5% on average was gained using 2 methods of fuel consumption monitoring. These results were ratified when the stock plugs were installed and 2000km of monitoring has shown a 6.5% - loss in fuel economy. Increased Temperature and humidity averages was factored in as well and this results in the additional 1.5% loss from the 5%.
Note: the aftermarket addons to the car are a 2.25” dual exhaust (single canister), at the 5000km point a Short Ram was removed and the car was restored to stock intake form. The spark plug gap for driving was .044”
5. Car ride and comfort, these plugs did compromise the Mivec’s ability to stabilize the cars idle. Regardless of operating temperature. This unstable idle RPM could be minimized if the user uses a smaller gap.

Focusing on the problems specific to our lancers, there are just too many cases of failure or problems to dismiss as just a bad bunch. Further data will need to be collected. I can only guess / extrapolate with all the information I have gather that it is narrowed specificly to the ignition timing. When asking questions with some in the industry of Fuel and Ignition modification. There are so many factors that affect the combustion process, its just not as simple as dialing forward to advance or back to retard. I mean it took me 3 good reads to learn about ignition firing, its alot to absorb, although some may tell you, oh its simple stuff its easy. But trust me there is alot going on in there, plus we are not talking about a simple system here. The latest generation of mivec goes beyond previous generations in terms of idle stabilization and valve timing efforts. Taking it right out of wiki “The 4B1 engine family is the first to have the continuously variable valve timing MIVEC system applied not only to its intake valves but also to its exhaust valves. The intake and exhaust cam timing is continuously independently controlled and provide four optimized engine operating modes”
Its hard to say how mivec will react to ignition changes. But it is something that I will attempt to play with to come up with a working solution. Four Star has offered their services for the tuning, utilizing their Dyno Dynamics dyno machine. Where this leaves me is, getting my hands on A) scan tools to figure out whats going on with the cars ignition system with the pulstar plugs B) getting my hands on a RRM Piggyback unit or equivalent. The scan tool part has already been taken care of and I must say, I am very impressed with the level of access. A scan tool by the name of Auto Enginuity was shown to me by a mechanic helping me run down what that engine code was, and I was so impressed with the quick use that I had to go out and contact the manufacturer and figure out if it could help with this project.

~~~ Using the right tools

The answer is simply yes. Utilizing an enhanced module I will be able to see almost everything the manufacturer / dealer can see on their diagnostic computer and be able to initiate active commands to the car as well. Now its not going to allow me to remote control the car, but it may allow me to interact with key systems that are relavent. For a complete list of sensors and active commands, look here http://www.autoenginuity.com/Mitsubi...tems-List.html . I was fortunate enough to get my hands on this module before anyone else since its just hitting the market this quarter. I am also fortunate enough to get the chance to work with a dedicated tech in case I run into any unforeseen problems or situations. So in terms of the right scanning tools for the road, thats covered, On the dyno, Frank at FourStar has similar toys that probably packs an even better punch then this. The only question is, will the RRM piggyback unit be up to the job, initial guess is yes, so I will see if I can work out something with Rob at RRM to get our hands on a piggyback, because should this modification be successful, a reprogram of the unit can be made available to those who decide to take the pulstar plunge. One friend / tech i know, said he would be surprised if even more power could be pulled out of the spark plugs and the standard RRM piggyback unit. The two of them together could bring almost 12 units of TQ in the 5 speed 2.0L.

~~~~~~~~~Enerpulse’s future
I think if Enerpulse really wants to tighten their game, they are going to have to develop or create their own piggyback module. The logic is simple. Older cars are not complicated, they are very simple. New cars, are so complicated, not even their own tech know whats going on when something goes wrong. So there will be a higher rate of failure in todays cars. They will need an aftermarket tuning solution to correct some of the problems. Partnering up with well established tuning companies like Greddy for example or AEM or any other more dedicated tuning product companies can lead to improved success in their effort to turn their .0001% marketshare into a whole single digit or higher. Time, money, and a bit of luck will dictate what happens to enerpulse, but i think they are on the right track and they have definitely gotten the attention of some in the printed mag community such as Modified Mag
~~~ the verdict
Even though Enerpulse has stumbled abit with their approach of shoot first ask questions later, the efforts mean well. And I have yet to see a failure in the original plugs I was sent. The currently are running in my mazda’s and the results there were even better than this complicated situation. I continue to be impressed with the product, but by no means are we all the way there for the lancer. Although installing the spark plugs in your Mitsubishi Lancer may lead to a rough idle, regardless of that, there is a very good chance that rough idle could save you some money. If you are not an advance user, and your don’t change your own spark plugs, I would say avoid buying these for now. If you are confident in your spark plug changing abilities and want to take advantage of a piggyback unit at a later date, then these might be worth a shot. Pulstar has the 30 day trial minus shipping. So long as you don’t live in Japan or something, I don’t think there is a problem. I will keep everyone update wth my advances and discoveries with the scan tool, and also my in roads with the piggyback testing.

 

Good Stuff Evo Soul. Thanks for this information.
Looking forward to more info on this.
Like the new exhaust too

 

So the answer is No, at least for my leased ES.

I was looking at swapping the plugs on my '07 Civic, but after you mentioned the idle problems with MIVEC ... I'm guessing VTEC would do the same. And like you wrote: the newer the car, the more complicated, the more difficult to upgrade safely.

So ... I'll stick with my K&N drop in air filter, 40 PSI all wheels and proper maintenance for now, for better MPG.


I know this is a different subject and this is not the place to post and it might also sound stupid but I say it:

I would like to see some real world results with an HHO kit that claims to improve MPG with 50% 70% or even 100% by pumping the hydrogen and oxygen produced by electrolysis into the car's intake and other places in your engine. Maybe you will consider to give this a try in one of your future projects. Yeah, I know it sounds like scam, but who knows ... Maybe we can stick it to the oil man.

 

on my slightly older civic I noticed no problems. MIVEC and VTEC go about things in very different ways. there is a good chance that it will work out ok

 

I don't think it's a scam cuz there's that guy that came across how to light sea water on fire by accident while looking for a cure for cancer, and I know in Japan they have a car working on any type of water. Just search youtube for those. As for the kits, I ordered the plans for one, but I'm still trying to figure out how to build it. There's a lot of custom fabrication and a lot of the parts aren't cheap or easy to come by like it says it is. If I manage to find all the parts, I will be trying it out. so I'll post anything I find, but don't expect anything any time soon :-D

 

I had a decent post up about HHO, well questioning it that is. I still think its highly feesible. I mean FFS, they have cars that run off of food and vegetable oil. They only require 5 minutes of regular idling to get warmed up and then 5 minutes at the end to clean the lines out with regular gas, but other than that its runs on food and Its a hummer no less. I'd gladly try HHO on my car but i dont feel like drilling holes into the intakes and such. And of course risking the chance of me botching something and blowing up my engine with water. Then again its alot easier to say "i dont know, what happen, i was driving home in the pouring rain and my car just started acting funny" :P

well, hopefully these Pulstars can refine themselves and become what we want them to. Thanks for the write up evo!