Colourful neo-traditional tattoo of a spark plug, piston and engine parts with molecule diagrams and lightning, across an upper arm, shoulder and chest.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Spark plug and piston engine tattoo on shoulder and chest

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A large tattoo shows a spark plug and piston at the centre, with a chrome cylinder on the upper arm and orange connecting rods radiating outwards. Bold black outlines, glossy shading and bright lightning bolts sit over green, orange and blue splashes, with fine black molecular structures and smoke-like grey wisps linking the elements. The design spans the upper arm, shoulder and chest, with the composition moving from the arm across the upper body.

Neo-trad Upper arm Shoulder Chest Piston Engine Lightning Molecule Smoke Splash Gear

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomasz, the Vauxhall came in on Monday with a cough like a wet dog, and I told Mr Pryce it was the plugs before I'd even lifted the bonnet. You never believe me until you've got your own hand in the engine bay, so I'm putting the lesson in writing, since you've taken the job in Leeds and won't be here to be shouted at.

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Gap the plug at point six of a millimetre, no more, and never trust an old one just because it looks clean. The spark needs somewhere to jump, that's all it is, a little lightning asking the mixture to go bang. Blue smoke out the back means the rings are tired. The piston isn't to blame, it's only doing its job, shoving the connecting rod round the crank pin, the same journey every few hundredths of a second for a hundred thousand miles.

Mr Okafor from the night school drew me the molecules once, on the back of a parts invoice. Petrol cracking apart in the cylinder, carbon and hydrogen swapping partners faster than you can blink. I thought he was showing off until I saw those little black structures in the exhaust haze coming off Mrs Lowe's Cortina, and realised he'd been describing the same mess I'd been swearing at for twenty years.

Mrs Lowe collected the car on Friday, engine purring like a cat, and left a tin of shortbread on the counter with a note tucked under the lid. 'Tell the boy the spark is only a spark if it knows where to go.' I've pinned it above the bench. Come home at Christmas and I'll show you the gap myself.