Hi, I;m trying to help a friend with a riding mower problem. It has a 17hp Kohler twin engine which runs very poorly. After checking compression (both cyls good) and the fuel system (all clean and good gas), I checked the spark. It was very weak and intermittent on both cylinders. After removing some covers, I found that both plug wires are in very
bad shape (insulation melted and rubbed thru). I cut them back to within 6" of the magneto coil, and get a great spark there.
My question is: is there any way to splice good plug wires onto the 6" stubs that I have now? The "wires" have a carbon core, not a wire core. My goal is to save the friend some $. Any ideas / comments / experience with this? Thanks for any help- Steve

 

I don't know that you can make a good reliable spice - I'd replace the wires!

 

I purchased off ebay a spark plug wire connector a while back. I was just for this purpose.

 

Really? Are spark plug wires that expensive? Personally, I wouldn't even consider repairing one.

 

Unless I'm missing something completely, the spark plug wires that sdodder is referring to are connected directly to the coils, so it's not simply a matter of replacing the spark plug wires but of having to replace the coils in order to replace the spark plug wires. Sdodder, I am not familiar with the connector that jl66 mentioned, and would be a little skeptical of that providing a long term solution, so, while understanding wanting to help someone, I would go for the coils if I were in your shoes. Slightly unfortunate perhaps, but you would know that it's fixed right.

 

OK, I get if they're part of the coil packs.

 

Thanks for all the replies. Steve

 

For anyone who's interested- here's what I did- I carefully stripped the insulation on the old wire stubs exposing the carbon core. I did the same on 2 "donor" wires. I joined the carbon cores with small crimp connectors, covered with layers of electrical tape to original wire diameter. Then I covered the splice with hear-shrink tubing. Looks pretty good and seems to work great.
How long it will last is another question- so far, so good! Steve