Originally Posted By: DJ
IN my experience ASE certification means skilled parts swapper, has NOTHING to do with understanding how everything works.
The higher thermal conductivity of copper certainly can come in handy once you start turning up the power, adding nitrous etc..
Just because a technology is old doesn't make it without any benefit.
Arguments like "faster starting" are generic and used to push an opinion. My car has nearly double stock HP still NA, stock coil/module/distributor, copper plugs and a couple points more than stock compression and fires instantly even after sitting the winter.
For my daily driver I wont be putting copper in it, for modified vehicles though the better cooling of copper can come in handy. Sometimes we have to deal with things like cylinder to cylinder airflow imbalance and such that would make a fine wire that doesn't cool well detonate in a lean cylinder that is hot and on rich cylinders plugs will get dirty no matter what type they are.
I am not saying copper is better, just that it still has a place on the shelves of the parts stores.
Newsflash: they are all copper cored these days, "copper" plug is just steel / steel alloy electrode plug with copper core, all others are the same "copper" core plug with various exotic material at the tip of the electrode.