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I know of an incident that happened last year with a
high-compression, high-output engine with EI and mags. This plane burned a
piston, and immediately the EI was suspected for multiple sparking. Upon
teardown it was shown that the problem was because the aviation plugs for the
mag were of the wrong heat range and showed damage, whereas the LSE plugs that
were supplied, of the correct heat range, looked normal. The problems that were
first mentioned about engines blowing up with EI seems to me were due to
incorrect timing, too-lean mixture, or wrong heat-range plugs. These are the
normal sources of the damage, most likely pre-ignition, that caused these
problems. Typically when an engine has problems where both mags and EI are
involved, the immediate reaction is that the EI was at fault. In most cases
where a plane crashed, it was later found that most of the pilots drank coffee
in the preceding 8 hours. Correlation: coffee drinking by pilots is dangerous
because it causes pilots to crash!
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