95 Ford Ranger?

Question

Why does the Ford 4 cyl ranger engines have 2 spark plugs per cyl i mean thats 8 plugs per engine but any ways why does it?

Answer 1

Ah, the old "fast burn" combustion chambers.......they are designed only for the trucks and not the passenger cars. (same 2.3L design specs, exc. for head)

These fast burn combustion chambers were supposed to produce more power, and to reduce detonation under heavy loads that a truck sees in regular service.

some people like to alternate which plugs they change.....intake side or exhaust side. But I think it makes it too easy to forget which side.
I recommend double platinum plugs (motorcraft, please) and forget about it for aproximately 80,000 miles.
Now, you only have to worry about plug wires.....which fail much more often than spark plugs.

Answer 2

I wasn't aware that Ford used used 2 plugs per cylinder, but if that is the case, it all goes to more spark surface area. The more surface area there is, the more spark that is present to ignite the fuel. That is why HEI performs better than old points distributors. More voltage meant you could have a bigger gap on the plug, which meant more spark surface area. Since a combustion cycle only has fraction of a second to ignite the fuel that has been dumped into the combustion chamber, there is only so much that a given spark surface area can ignite per given time. By having more surface area you get better, more complete combustion which allows more energy to be extracted from the fuel. This in turn gives you more power, better fuel economy, and better emissions.

Answer 3

Mazda screwed up that engine design and the flame propogation in the cylinders wasn't what it should be, so they decided to ignite the mixture at two different points at once to fix it.