I got a 85 gl wagon new plugs/wires cap and rotor it's arching where the base of the spark plugs seat to the head if you look down at the head there is just a ring of electricity around the base of the plug on all 4 cylinders it idles bad and dies and at higher​ rpm is feels like a miss fire but if you close the choke plates it runs fine you can hear little pops through the throat of the carb like to much air or a vacuum leak it has the Weber 32/36 with a transdapt 1 piece adapter plate my question is do I have an electrical or carb problem I know it's not supposed to do either

Edited May 4, 20178 yr by pbilt

Sounds like the plug wire is not seated properly on the plug.   I had one like that after new plug wires were installed.

Checked plugs and wires this is my second set of plugs and wires the first time I used the cheap pro spark now I got bosh wires and still same thing it's not arching from the boot of the plug wire it's arching around the base of the plug and on all 4 cylinders I checked all the engine to body grounds and added a grounding strap to both heads

It's arching at the washer that is on the bottom of the plug that seats to the head on all 4 cylinders

Edited May 4, 20178 yr by pbilt

That is pretty weird. It's hard to come up with a way the threads would be insulared enough to cause arcs there.... and the washers should be slightly crushed between the head and the plug, and that should be bare metal to metal, which would be good contact.

http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/topic/139106-light-show/ this sounds almost exactly like my problem with the spark issue but they never said what the problem was or they just gave up and the thread died

Sounds to me like they're giving you the wrong plugs, or you've got a ground issue. You need to do a voltage drop reading from the hex head of the spark plugs to the negative post of the battery. It should be less than 1V. I can tell from experience that resistance readings for a circuit that carries a load don't mean squat. You can have no resistance and still not be able to carry a load.

Is it arcing on all plugs or one?

all 4 how do you do a voltage drop test

Ngk plugs are recomended. I don't know if it's possible but can the coil be generating to much voltage.

Set your meter to DC volts, range-12v. Place one lead on the plug hex and the other lead on the negative battery post and take your reading. It's not possible for a coil to put out more voltage than spec without cranking up the input voltage. Output is based on the number of windings inside the coil and the gauge of the windings. Even then, I've run 80,000 & 100,000 volt coils on vehicles and never seen anything like what you're describing. I suppose the coil could have an internal high resistance short to ground and be feeding back into the electrical system but I doubt it.

I'll try the voltage drop this weekend the coil that is one here now is the old coil I had a new coil on before this all started so I swapped it with the old one and it's still doing the same thing both coils ohmed out good