Supersparkz Review

[The_Roadie]

...The wires coming from the WSS's (+ & -) were twisted, or coiled together. This created resistance in the wire itself. When serviced, these wires had to be rebuilt including the same number of twists as was put in it from the factory or it would fail its self test and set a code with the EBCM. Check out a TSB or GM repair manual on a mid ninetys passenger car, it will tell the tech to make sure there are X number of twists in the sensor wire....

Just to clarify with my engineering background - a single wire coiled up exhibits some inductance. A pair of wires twisted together has some inductance, but the huge benefit is the mutual inductance between the two wires that cancels out electrical interference (noise) from outside the pair of wires. The best way to reduce the influence of outside noise is to shield the wires with a separate tubular (braided) shield. But twisting is cheap (free) and works on many circuits with very low amount of signal on them, like the ABS sensors. Just a bit of detail on WHY twisting is a useful tactic.

I didn't know the NUMBER of twists was ever measured and could cause a diagnostic failure. Cool.

 

[McGMT]

Just to clarify with my engineering background - a single wire coiled up exhibits some inductance. A pair of wires twisted together has some inductance, but the huge benefit is the mutual inductance between the two wires that cancels out electrical interference (noise) from outside the pair of wires. The best way to reduce the influence of outside noise is to shield the wires with a separate tubular (braided) shield. But twisting is cheap (free) and works on many circuits with very low amount of signal on them, like the ABS sensors. Just a bit of detail on WHY twisting is a useful tactic.

I didn't know the NUMBER of twists was ever measured and could cause a diagnostic failure. Cool.

See, now on the other side I would have been called and idiot and told it was the ignition switch...

 

[RayVoy]

Impedance is the name for the "resistance" the previous poster is talking about.

Impedance is formed in a metallic coil when current is switched on, or off. Normally, this occurs in an AC environment, rather than a DC circuit. It can, however, occur when the DC is pulsed, as in a sawtooth wave.

A sawtooth wave is essentially what we would see from the output of an ignition coil (this also would have been the way the old coil and points ignition was fired).

So, it is possible to create an electrical "resistance" from the high voltage side of the coil.

And, yes, there may be some impedance created from the twists in the plug connector wire; but, the loops are few and (electrically speaking) far apart, so I don't think there would be a lot of impedance designed into the system.

However, I do agree.............replacing the oem connector with a solid connector is not an improvement.

Taking this conversation into the ABS system, this system produces an AC sine wave. I suspect, the requirement for the correct number of twists in the leads to the magnetic sensor is to balance the output of the sensor.

See, now on the other side I would have been called and idiot and told it was the ignition switch...

Well, now I feel like the idiot (it was the ignition switch ). I did not notice there was one more page to this story and that Bill (as usual) had beat me to the answer.

Carry on Gentlemen