The car Bibles product reviews: Performance-related products.

Pulstar Pulse Plugs

Test started October 26th 2008    (no rating yet)

Website: www.pulstar.com

Pulstar spark plugs make some unique claims about their technology and what it can do for your car. Essentially they're billed as the cheapest, quickest way to more horsepower and better fuel economy. Sounds familiar? The difference is that Pulstar's claims aren't wild. They don't claim to double your gas mileage, or add a gazillion horsepower. They claim modest gains - up to 7% - which is realistic. Pulstar do several plug types to suit all different vehicles from motorbike to cars to SUVs and 4x4s. You can use their website to lookup a suitable variant for your own vehicle. Here I tested the be1 plugs. Pulstar claim that the technology inside the insulator section of the plug is what makes their product different. In a normal vehicle high tension circuit, it takes time for the voltage to build up to the point where the spark plug can discharge it with a spark. Now when I say "it takes time", I'm talking milliseconds, but according to Pulstar, those milliseconds count - it's wasted energy. Their plugs have a capacitor-like circuit in them which stores the so-called wasted energy in the buildup to the spark, then uses it all at once to create a more powerful spark. The theory is that a better spark means better combusion, which can give you performance or fuel economy gains, depending on whether you're driving normally or hooning around like a madman.

Below is a cutaway of a Pulstar plug (thanks to Ramblerdan at the EOC). The insulator didn't like being taken to pieces, and the grinder pretty much ruined the rest of the plug so it's difficult to tell how the innards are supposed to be different to any other plug.

The test vehicle for this product test is a Honda Element. The Element isn't exactly a performance vehicle - it's a porky SUV with the aerodynamics of a tower block. It has Honda's venerable 2.4 i-VTEC engine in it though, so it's no slouch considering it's size. However, it does represent a factory vehicle with no performance mods; one that is used every day for everything from hoofing it mountain roads to go skiing, to long-distance road trips. In other words, it's exactly the sort of vehicle the average driver might own. To test the Pulstar claims, two things need to happen. First - fuel economy before-and-after, and second, outright horsepower and 0-60 times before and after. Fuel economy is easy - I keep records of the Element's fuel economy at every fill up. Performance is a little more difficult unless you have a deserted road with no police, or a friendly motorsports track.

Before

To get a good average for all the figures measured, the key is to get a bunch of readings, eliminate the highest and lowest values, then average the rest. The performance testing was done using a G-Tech performance meter - an easy-to-use product that has proven to be within a couple of percent of more traditional measurement methods. Below is a table of ten 0-60 times, ten horsepower runs and seven mpg calculations, sorted lowest-to-highest. These are real-world figures, not manufacturer-inflated ones. Unfortunately, being done with an automatic transmission does somewhat skew the horsepower measurement, but the important number will be the difference between the before and after horsepower values, not the values themselves. Note - the rows are independent of each other. ie. a horsepower measurement does not correspond to an mpg calculation or 0-60 time.

mpg	Horsepower	0-60 time
17.6	105	11.37
17.9	106	11.74
18.0	106	11.77
18.2	107	11.78
19.4	108	11.80
19.5	108	11.80
19.7	109	12.00
-	111	12.01
-	112	12.26
-	115	12.28

Eliminating the highest and lowest values for each reading, and averaging the rest gives the following 'before' calculation with stock spark plugs. Pulstar claim it could take a couple of tankfuls of gas for a car's engine management system to adapt to the new plugs, so this is a long term test. The 'after' results will be posted in month or so.

Conclusion : none yet - test in progress.