Well, I sent an order off to buy some leads from Beachcomber's friends at Realm Engineering.
56 pounds (approx 88 Oz dollars) for a set of 4 leads (8mm diameter) sent to Oz.

Excellent value, very well made, quick postage, fitted like a glove. They've been fitted for 2 weeks now and all is great.

Oh, the leads are red so my bike goes even faster now...

When I needed some leads I just went to the local auto store and bought some of those blue silicon leads. That was 4 years ago and all is still fine.
They had all sorts of sizes and sets and I just got the length I needed with a 90 Deg at the coil end. I recall it only cost about $30.

Yeah...but mine are red!

So my bike is faster than your bike.

What that red thing it would probably pass out and fall over at the sight of a corner

Yeah, probably would, but it would pass out and fall over with style!

Is that the sound of warm yellow water splashing on the ground?

maybe...

So, since I was playing in the garage today and had the HT ignition leads off and since we're on this subject I thought I'd do a little question asking meself.

I took Ohms reading on all of my old, tired-looking original HT leads. We know they're supposed to be at 5K Ohms of resistance as new. Mine come up as 6K for No 1, 4.9K for No's 2 & 3, and 5.4K for No 4 - all within an acceptable, usable range. The aftermarket leads (Top Gun brand in a really really fast cool blue, faster than red even, 8mm silicone, suppressed) I have available all fall in the 5K to 6K Ohms range. The bike runs reasonably well with these aftermarket leads fitted.

Discuss the merits, pros and cons of using HT leads that are at or close to the magic 5K Ohms level. I realise that too much suppression reduces the sparking and ignition energy to the spark plugs. In other words is this simply to reduce radio frequency interference (RFI) or does the ignition system or ECU require this 5K ohms level of resistance for some other reason like feedback to the coils, etc? Since none of them (the ones I have, OEM or aftermarket) produce a reading that's significantly lower that specific point is moot, or is it?

Hey TWB,
I looked into this before getting plug wires from Magnecor. Steve Brown of Magnecor sent me this info:

"The factory wire is unsuppressed copper wire, so they need to add a resistor for noise suppression. That is the reason the resistor is there - it serves no other purpose. We start with suppressed wire, so the resistor is not necessary.

I frankly do not think it will make much difference which spark plugs you use, since the noise suppression comes from the wires, but the resistor plugs should last longer."

Steve


Hope this answers some of those questions.

OG

Ta. I use resistor sparkies and these Top Gun leads are suppressed, the bike trundles along, so all is well. I asked because with the Airheads the resistance of the leads is important because there is variance in the ignition coils depending upon which ignition system is used, the various aftermarket, factory electronic or the old points/condensor.