MovieChat Forums > Nymphomaniac: Vol. II (2014) Discussion > Spark Plug Scene

Spark Plug Scene

posted 10 years ago by Ant1238
5 replies | jump to latest

Ok--I admittedly know nothing about cars, so I'm probably missing something, but:

In the scene where Joe disconnects all her spark plugs so that guys have to come along and help her, it says that there are hundreds of different ways these spark plug caps can go on, and it's basically trial and error. That can't possibly be true, is it? There's literally no way to figure out which spark plug cap goes on which spark plug other than completely random guessing? Mechanics just sit in garages all day testing out hundreds of variations on this until they happen to get it right? :-\

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[–] guy48065 10 years ago

There is only one correct sequence, or "firing order", where the engine will run correctly. If a mechanic knowledgeable with that particular engine had happened along he could have installed the wires correctly without guessing.

[–] skay_baltimore 10 years ago

I learned this lesson the hard way! I had a V-6 and was changing/replacing the wires. I took them all off at once, rather than taking off one, replacing it, taking the next one off, replacing it, etc. I made such a mess the car wouldn't start. There is only ONE correct way to connect the wires from the distributor to the spark plugs. Any other way...the car won't start. The guy who came to fix the mess I made looked at me like I was crazy for not knowing that. On a V-8, there are a LOT of different combinations; only ONE is the right one.

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[–] neerood 10 years ago

Sort of true. The spark plug wires have to go to the correct plugs, but generally they are each of unique length, plus molded and shaped so that it's pretty obvious which one goes where. There might end up being a couple that are ambiguous, so it's unrealistic to think that all permutations of the 8 wire positions would be required.

[–] adaniel87 10 years ago

If all 8 could fit anywhere, there would be 8! possible solutions (8 factorial = 40320). With a few hundred, it's more like 5 of them could go anywhere (5! = 120)

[–] WhenGreyjoysCry 10 years ago

But the wires are different lengths. Some wires just wont be able to reach all of the plugs, reducing the number of possible combinations.

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