Broken plug extenders after very few miles

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I bought a complete new set of plug extenders mid 2014 as part of a complete engine rebuild. For one reason or another I have used the car very little for the last 2 years - total of about 500 miles at the most. I looked at it today with a view to getting it an MOT and using it for the summer, but I couldn't get it to run right.

I soon found the reason - a bit of arcing might be happening:


They claimed to be the correct Beru part and as ever were not the cheapest option. I am going to speak to the supplier, since it is a reasonable expectation for them to last a bit longer than 22 months and 500 miles... The only issue is that I am not sure I want replacements if they are going to do the self same thing. Is anyone else having trouble?

Has anything happened in the last year or so to design these horrible unreliable things out of RV8 TVRs?

Thanks

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Thanks. Nice to know I'm not alone with this. Can't say I was very happy when I found out!

Note that the latest extenders do not have the 5k ohm resistor built in to them, so you should use resistive plugs with them.

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Nothing drastic. Just the chance of loads of electrical interference.

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Just spoke to the supplier and as I suspected they are prepared to do nothing about it. They are over a year old, so no warranty and apparently they were fit for purpose so I must have cooked them by running in a "highly modified" engine over 500 miles.

Best advice here seems to be don't buy the new Beru parts and expect them to last a decent length of time in a TVR in a good state of tune. (The older parts seemed to use much better material and I have seen none of them crack like these - the old failure mode was usually to fail to grip the spark plug and slowly rotate until the HT lead was on the manifold.)

Oh well, another one chalked up to experience. It's not worth my time arguing further over £50, so it looks like I am going to import a set of the ceramic things.

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Clever Trevor after being taken over by Racing Green. I should say this is in no way naming and shaming - they haven't done anything wrong. (They have however shown no good will either and declared I have used the parts inappropriately which is why they have broken. This is even though there have been a number of issues with them.)

Looking at the old Beru parts - I have 4 resistive and 4 non-resistive parts still in working order - and the new cracked ones side by side the insulating plastic material is clearly very different. The old ones look and feel like bakelite while the new ones look more like a modern thermoplastic and feel cheap and nasty in comparison. I am still of a mind that the new Beru parts are not fit for the purpose of extending TVR spark plugs.

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MPO said:

I'm sure Racing Green Parts went to TVR Parts???

Yes, they did. But this was not established in July 2014 when I bought mine.

It would be interesting to see who else has had problems with the new extenders.

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I have ordered a set of the Accel ceramic leads. They come uncrimped at the coil ends and come with a choice of ends. It looks like they are all the same length, so can be cut to custom lengths. Hopefully they won't take too long to arrive.

I have sent an email to Beru to see if they can say anything about the change of materials.

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I am waiting for my ceramic lead set to arrive. As far as I can see the dizzy ends are uncrimped so you can choose which plugs to put on.