Spark plug wires

[x-man78]

What kind of problems can your spark plug wires cause if they are bad or connected wrong

[skids]

If they are "bad" they can short the spark onto the engine or cam cover or give your fingers a nice JOLT.

If they are connected wrong they will fire plugs in the wrong order.

The stock wires have stranded wire cores and the plug caps look like a threaded wood screw to thread into and between the wire strands of the plug wires. Caps can go bad and when they start going bad they get worse when they get hot.

Your plug wires might have corroded ends. If your wires don't have breaks along their lengths, and your plug wires are long enough, you can snip off a little on the end to get rid of corroded stranded wire core. When I do that, I trim the insulation back just enough to expose the fresh wires so that I can pry the strands outward to start the cap into the center.

[DGXSER]

It is pretty hard to get them connected wrong really. Since these engines run on the "wasted spark" system, meaning the coil fires two plugs every time, one is on compression stroke, the other is on exhaust stroke. So the "wasted" spark in the cylinder ont he exhaust stroke has no effect. However, it means there is really only two "sparks" to time. 1 and 4 are together on one coil, two and three are together on the other coil. You can trade wires from 1-4 or 2-3 with no change in performance.

If you have them mismatched like 1-3 ad 2-4 the bike will never run. You can also get the coils backwards, connected to the wrong pickup coils. The bike will not run like that either.

Bad wires, like SKids says, you lose spark to a ground of one type or another. Might get no spark or a weak one.