MTFCA Forum

A couple years ago I bought a T that had a set of Firestone Polonium spark plugs in it. They seemed to work fine but I eventually replaced them and put them up in a cabinet. I came across them the other day and was curious to know if anyone knew much about them. Are they a better plug by being radioactive or was it just a gimmick?

It’s a gimmick, a remnant of “Atomic Age” marketing, “put the power of the Atom to work in your car!”

Idea was polonium would help ionize air, improving spark.

Check the half life of polonium, and you will see why it sure did not last long or work well.

They were often (not always) a lovely Pink, if you enjoy that…

It was a gimmick, they were first introduced early 40’s through the mid 40s, the premiss was the radioactive polonium helped the plug fire hotter & better. The half life of the polonium was about 140 days so after a few years the plugs would have no radioactivity left. The plugs will work fine but the gimmick is inert.

Radiation was thought to be a good thing, or at least harmless.

If you were born before the war you probably remember sticking your feet in one of these at the shoe store and watching the bones in your feet move when you wiggled your toes. As you can see, Mom and the salesman could watch too. Eventually somebody figured out that radiating kids' feet was not a good idea.

Some info on the danger of Polonium and that the old spark plugs are no longer a danger
https://www.utoledo.edu/nsm/ic/elements/polonium.html Contributor: Cassandra Pittman
About the Display: The Po display features:
A Firestone spark plug containing Polonium. Polonium was used, specifically polonium-210, to improve electrical conductivity and allow a larger spark gap. In theory, this meant that there would be a more complete combustion of fuel. The original patent for radioactive spark plugs was approved in 1929 and was actually written for radium. The patent for the Firestone spark plugs was approved in 1941. Polonium ended up being the radioactive element of choice since it was safer than radium and more effective than uranium or thorium. The spark plugs were only manufactured for about 3-4 years in the 1940's, though, since the benefits were minimal and short-lived. Polonium-210's short half-life of 138 days and the inevitable build-up of deposits on the electrodes, which prevented the polonium from interacting with the gas, are what lead to the demise of these radioactive spark plugs. The polonium in the spark plugs is no longer dangerous, due to the short half life. For more information, visit https://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/con ... kplugs.htm
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Neat Youtube about them https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=pBHmScF7-ww --
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They came in Pink and White and are marked Polonium

But wait. I was born just after the war (WWII) and put my feet into one of those x-ray shoe-fit boxes. It didn't affect my brain...my brain...my brain...

I seem to rememeber that J.C. Whitney offered a miracle gadget that replaced the distributor rotor with a disc-shaped object. I think it brought a disc-shaped conductive element near all the high tension contacts in the distributor cap, but not quite near enough to allow a spark to jump. One conductive element functioned in the normal fashion to fire each plug in turn. The idea was that high voltage would leak from the disc to the distributor cap contacts and pre-ionize the mixture in the plug gaps, thus facilitating a hotter spark, and thus obtaining benefits similar to those claimed for the polonium plugs. I doubt if it worked very well, if it worked at all. Evidently it didn't offer much benefit, since it could have easily and cheaply been adapated to any application, yet no manufacturers did so.

Check out other spark plugs and spark intensifiers in our Gallery Section: https://mtfca.com/phpBB3/app.php/galler ... ?sk=n&sd=a

Plugs and things start at about page 25 of the section.

Although the halflife of Polonium makes old sparkplugs non lethal from a radiation vieuwpoint, it does not prevent them from being poisonous...
Polonium is a preferred poison used by mr. Putins secret service, once a very small amount is inhaled or ingested it leads to irreversible damage to internal organs like the liver and kidneys, leading to vomiting, diarhea, and loss of hair, followed by shutdown of several bodily functions ultimately leading to a horrible death.
So be warned, DO NOT LICK YOUR OLD SPARKPLUGS

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