Hi.
Putting a photoflash or neon or other gas lamp in series to a automotive spark plug, would the lamp survive the current and still have spark ?.
Am not sure of the current such connection would allow. Gadgets are sold for motorcycles to tell the high voltage is present at the cable, but do not really know how are they made.



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If you are using resistance ignition wires, which are widely used to minimize radio interference, you can figure the current will only be 1 or 2 milliamps after the first few microseconds. Find your self a tube that can run that much current continuously and give it a try.

 

Yes you can put strobe or Xenon lights in series with the spark plugs, as long as they are 10KV rated,, Neons are only rated for 100V after that they need a Series resistor around 180 to 220K..


You can make yourself a pickup coil by wrapping a few turns of wire around the plug lead and put it across a led..

 

I have a thing which you put between the plug and the lead which has a lamp in it. I suspect it is a neon (can't see it as it in quite thick plastic to keep the volts in) but whether it is a 'special' neon is anyones guess.

 

Yes you can put strobe or Xenon lights in series with the spark plugs, as long as they are 10KV rated,, Neons are only rated for 100V after that they need a Series resistor around 180 to 220K..


You can make yourself a pickup coil by wrapping a few turns of wire around the plug lead and put it across a led..

I have to question the need for such a high voltage rating. Is this the breakdown voltage of the lamp? I would think the lower the better so far as not hurting engine performance much.

About 50 years ago we would take some vinyl insulated solid copper wire and wrap about six inches of it around a sparkplug lead as a capacitive sensor (In the U.S. otherwise it would be cm) and then run the wire into the passenger compartment where we had arrays of four neon lamps, one connected for each cylinder, and the other leads of the lamps connected to the car's chassis. There was no practical use but is really cool to look at while driving at night.