DuPuis Family Cobra Build

[Ted]

I saw one of these today and I though of the DuPuis Automotive and Wrecking Service.

I gotta think if any of your vehicles needs pulled out of a predicament, this ought to be able to handle the job.

I’ve been watching an old fire truck on Facebook Marketplace. It’s be good for the bonfire.

But I like that!

 

[Matthew]

I’ve been watching an old fire truck on Facebook Marketplace. It’s be good for the bonfire.

But I like that!

It was parked in Anderson's lot, right across the tracks from Tractor Supply. I have no idea why it was there, but somebody's Corolla was probably dangling from that boom for most of the ride over.

An old fire truck would be cool -- add some beer taps on the side!

 

[Ted]

After some back and forth with Romac, they assembled a balancer, gave me some dimensions, and it looks like it will work perfect. Pictures are below.

Ordering and then getting it shipped over from down under. So now I need to get the starter and oil pan on so the car is ready for the balancer when it shows up.

 

[Ted]

I got my tracking number from Romac, this is exciting.

I also got the ignition coils (pair of Ford EDIS-4 coils) ordered. MSD and Accel make aftermarket coils. What I ended up learning back in college was that the aftermarket ones (at least the Accel ones) weren't as good as the factory Motorcraft ones. MSD ones are probably better than Accel, but it's seemed in my experience that the OEM makes the best ignition products for coil-on-plugs and coil packs. Different from standard ignition coils where MSD makes better stuff.

Anyway, Summit Racing sold the genuine Motorcraft ones for over $90, I found a place on Amazon that sold them for $65, got Summit to price match and now I have those on the way as well. I'm going to have to make brackets of some sort for them (or else buy the brackets off of a Ford 4.6 or Explorer 302 and use those) but I can start figuring that out once the coils show up.

I'm really at a point where I need to get my fuel lines bent around (however I'm going to do that) and then put on the starter and oil pan. I have a shopping cart of items from Summit but I'm going to wait on those since I still don't need them, and need to finish up on the fuel lines and oil pan. This weekend I could also rivet on the rear trunk panel if I felt like it and have the time to do it, but I think the priority is going to be the fuel line routing and the oil pan/starter. Also I still haven't made the bracket for the throttle cable.

 

[Ted]

Made some great progress today, although as usual, not in the order I expected.

After looking at the fuel lines some more I decided that I'm going to run them forward. Ultimately it will keep the car easier to service and provide more options for mounting the fuel pressure regulator, etc. There are some negatives with that routing aesthetically, but overall I think it's the best choice.

Once I made that decision, I went ahead and put on the starter and went to go put on the oil pan. The gasket on it didn't look correct, as the oil pan has a ridge and the gasket has a U-shapped channel on the opposite side. A call to Gordon Levy (the guy who sells the oil pan and has put more of them on than me) said yeah, that's how it is, it works. But he recommended RTV on both sides of the gasket, which I was planning on anyway and had heard before. So I RTV'd both sides.

RTV is one of those things where you're always racing a clock and (for me anyway) something always goes wrong. In this case what went wrong was I realized the bolts I was reusing were longer in order to utilize metal brackets under the oil pan. This seems like a good idea to reduce leaks (probably something that was added in the 80s or 90s for this reason). Of course, I realized this once I had the oil pan physically in place, only to note that every single one of the main pan bolts stuck out about 1/8". The 4 around the main caps were fine. So I found these old metal brackets, had to cut off one end to make it fit the 351 (fortunately the only difference in bolt pattern per side is at the back of the oil pan) and put it on.

I really hope that it doesn't leak. I'll admit that I'm not entirely convinced that this will work without some form of leak. That said, it shouldn't gush oil, so we'll just see what it does.

After that I did a little bit of tidying up - drilling and tapping a hole for the screw to hold the clutch cable in place (then putting that in), and then I made the bracket for the throttle cable. I need to add a few washers to lower the bracket from the throttle bodies. The height it's at now, the cable chafes a little in its channel as you open the throttle. So it needs a little more fine tuning, but what's really cool is that all three pedals on the car now physically do what they're supposed to, which is really exciting.

Today the MegaSquirt showed up in the mail, which is also exciting. I'll have to start looking into that and figuring out where to put it. I'm sort of surprised that my gauges I ordered haven't shown up yet, I'll call them on Monday.

I also did some more looking at the hand brake, and need to look at it further. I really, really don't like the way Factory Five wants it routed. I have a few ideas for ways to remount the hand brake lever, but I'm not sure if those ways will interfere with other items. I think it's something I just need to wait on for a while and see. Some people don't put a hand brake on the car at all, but I don't particularly like that idea.

I'm not sure if I'll do any work on the car tomorrow, but if I do, I think I'll probably rivet on that rear aluminum panel. Or I could always work on my fuel lines, or both.

Today I did a video more in line with what I see various YouTube channels that don't suck do, and had in some time lapse of me working and did little mini-videos at points for the real time "This is what I'm doing." Let me know if you like that style better. It ended up running quite a bit longer than my normal videos do, but perhaps more interesting content. Interestingly, YouTube says that at 1,000 subscribers I'm eligible to monetize. I've been getting a steady stream of new subscribers in and am currently sitting at 148 (much to my surprise). One of my videos on donor kit vs. complete kit has over 8,000 views, which I'm also astounded at. It's also responsible for about 1/3 of my subscribers.

 

[Ted]

Yesterday I managed to get my son's cold, although in the morning I still mostly felt ok so I did a little dremel work on the gas pedal I'm using so I could get the retainer for the throttle cable physically in, then mounted and adjusted (at least mostly so) where the gas pedal will be. I'm sure I'll need to do some more adjustment on it, but the nice thing with the one I'm going with is that it's just two allen keys, easy to adjust.

Today the coil packs showed up for my Ford EDIS ignition I'm using, genuine Motorcraft parts, brand new. So now I have to figure out what I want to do for a bracket to mount the coil packs and where exactly I want to mount them. Since these are wasted spark coils (two spark plugs fire at the same time) and this is a cross plane V8 engine, every firing pair will have one wire going to each bank. On the late 90s 5.0 Explorers that used this system from the factory, they mounted the coil packs in the front of the intake manifold above the thermostat housing area. That's one option. I also like doing how they did on the 4.6s, with one mounted to the front of each cylinder head. I'm going to have to make my own spark plug wires regardless of what I do. The 351 is going to require slightly longer wires than the 302, and no 351 came from the factory with EDIS. So while that part is a bit annoying, it also gives me a lot of freedom with where I put the coil packs. I'll need to do some experimenting.

I'm also thinking more about the hand brake and what I want to do there. This is going to require, you guessed it, more thinking. I really, really don't like the Factory Five recommendation of running the cables under one of the frame rails. Too Micky Mouse and puts the cables way too close to the driveshaft. So I'm going to have to do something else, I'm just not sure what yet. I'm probably going to have to wait on that decision until I get a bit further along to where I can physically see how the rest of the car is going to come together.

 

[Ted]

Laurie headed back to work today, and I have a box of parts, which leaves me thinking about what I want to do during the upcoming weekend. I think the first one is putting in at least some more of the fuel system together. The one 5/16" line going to the fuel filter I may need to do a little more work on before getting to that, but I should be able to at least mount the fuel pump, hopefully run the hard lines the rest of the way, and overall make some more progress towards getting that system finished up.

I've been avoiding mounting the radiator, but I may work on that over the weekend some anyway. I'm at a point where it's not going to get in the way of anything and I could at least start getting it mounted, zip-tied in place (that's how it's held up until the body is put on), and maybe the lower radiator hose put on.

And of course there's the rear aluminum panel I could put on. All progress, but now it's definitely at the point of having a lot of little details to work on.

 

[Zeldman]

5/16 fuel line.?? Really.??

 

[Ted]

5/16 fuel line.?? Really.??

5/16 supply, 1/4 return is standard, and sufficient for the horsepower I’m producing.

 

[Zeldman]

Is that what is recommended.??

Some of my early race cars didn't produce as much HP as your engine will and we used a minimum of 3/8 for fuel line. Then again that was carbureted engines.

 

[-KLB-]

Is that what is recommended.??

Some of my early race cars didn't produce as much HP as your engine will and we used a minimum of 3/8 for fuel line. Then again that was carbureted engines.

Fuel pump in the tank, and 40+ PSI in the lines? Or at the engine, and suction in the lines?

 

[mondtster]

Is that what is recommended.??

Some of my early race cars didn't produce as much HP as your engine will and we used a minimum of 3/8 for fuel line. Then again that was carbureted engines.

It should be fine. Most people are overzealous when it comes to fuel component sizing.

 

[Ted]

The 5/16" supply and 1/4" return lines are the stock sizes on the Fox body Mustangs. Word on the street is that those will pretty easily support significantly over my 400 HP goal. Most people don't upgrade the fuel lines on their Mustangs until they start running into much more significant power ratings than what I'm looking at, so I'm not concerned about it.

 

[Ted]

Three minor victories today. First one was I got the thermostat housing on. The real victory with this involved getting the correct size bolts. The thermostat housing I used required two different size bolts - 3/4" on one side and 1 1/4" on the other side. I went with allen head bolts since that worked the best with what I was going for. This ended up requiring two trips to Tractor Supply (one yesterday on my lunch break and then one today on the way to do a maintenance engine run on the MU-2). But now I have the thermostat housing bolted up with a 180F thermostat. The second one was putting on one of the fittings on the fuel rail, which let me get the crossover fuel hose correctly set up.

The third victory was that I got the height correctly set up for the throttle cable bracket, and then got that torqued down appropriately. Now the throttle cable doesn't chafe when opening and closing the throttle.

Like I said, minor, but they're there.

Another positive is that my gauges showed up yesterday. All Autometer Sport Comp gauges. I ordered them from a company I'd never heard of (that specializes mostly in diesel stuff) that had the best Black Friday prices. Catch was that the gauges got drop-shipped from Autometer. I was about to call up and demand a refund, figuring that they might be a scam after how long it was taking, but the gauges showed up direct from Autometer yesterday.

I ran Autometer Sport Comp gauges in my '82 Jaguar XJ-S back in college, so this is somewhat of a throwback. Frankly the gauges don't feel to be as good as I remember. The white coloring on the black background doesn't look to be as pronounced (i.e. I can see some of the black background through the lettering). The needles don't seem to be as brightly colored either. Maybe I'm just older and my eyes aren't as good or maybe they've changed something, I don't know. But, I'll get them installed. Part of me wonders if I shouldn't have gone for the 2 5/8" gauges instead of 2 1/16" as the 2 1/16" seem a bit small, but I think they'll be fine.

Really what I should do next is finish up the fuel lines... I hate fuel lines.

 

[Ted]

With being on vacation and otherwise busy with Christmas, there wasn't a lot that got done on the Cobra. However yesterday and today I managed to get back in the garage and get a few things done.

First was I started looking at the dashboard and putting the gauges in. I think I have the layout figured out - water temp, oil pressure, and oil temp across the top middle, and then voltage and fuel level across the bottom middle. Then behind the steering wheel, speedometer on the left and tachometer on the right. The tachometer position ends up being a little higher and easier to see through the steering wheel, and so I think that's a better spot for it. Since I went with a 5" speedo and tach (actually 4.5" hole) I will need to enlarge the hole for at least the speedometer. Interestingly, since the tach is a pedestal mount rather than dash mount, it tapers down and fits in the hole there just fine. However that doesn't go all the way up to the bezel, so I have to decide what I want to do there. More thinking required.

I do think I'm going to put the Factory Five supplied green and blue indicator lights between the speedo and tach for the turn signal indicator and the high beam indicator. They include a third light (red) but I don't think I'll use that. I'm not planning on any idiot light senders since I'm using real gauges.

Factory Five does include a couple switches and a momentary push button. I don't think I will use those. The push button (for starter or whatnot) feels low quality. The toggle switches feel good enough quality, but there's only two of them and I need a good number more. I do want to use toggle switch covers, and I also want those switches to be uniform. So I will probably just buy what I need there. But, I'm realizing I need to start thinking about those and ordering them, because electrical (and the dashboard) are impending.

The real accomplishment today was finishing up the return lines, pressure regulator, and hoses for the fuel system. I still need to order a plug for the pressure regulator (it has two inlets for some reason) but I made a hose, bent the lines, and otherwise it's finished up and connected. Fortunately I was able to get away with not making a hose between the hard lines and the pressure regulator, the lengths worked out perfectly. I need to buy a couple more hard lines (I kinked one, oops) and I can get the pressure side completed.

The Summit Racing brand fuel hose I bought I'll say I'm disappointed with. I'm sure part of the reason is because I'm used to aircraft grade fuel hoses, but I don't feel like these are good quality or would hold up to much of anything. Of course the fittings I've got are also aluminum and not stainless steel like what's on aircraft so they're lower quality too, but those at least feel sturdy enough. These hoses are worse than Aeroquip for sure. I'm not completely sure if I'll stick with them, but I'll at least put it together this way and do a leak check. There will only be three fuel hoses (everything else hard lines, rails, or fittings) so I can replace them easily enough later on if need be. And none of them are in particularly bad locations.

So, get a few more things at the auto parts store probably tomorrow, and make some more progress over the weekend towards finishing up the fuel lines.

The good part is that I'm effectively one hard line away from finishing up the fuel system (well, two given what I'm going to do differently on the supply side) and know exactly what I'm going to do there. I'm getting closer and closer to the point of the electrical system work needing to start.

 

[Ted]

Balancer arrived! This thing looks nice...

 

[FormerHangie]

With being on vacation and otherwise busy with Christmas, there wasn't a lot that got done on the Cobra. However yesterday and today I managed to get back in the garage and get a few things done.

First was I started looking at the dashboard and putting the gauges in. I think I have the layout figured out - water temp, oil pressure, and oil temp across the top middle, and then voltage and fuel level across the bottom middle. Then behind the steering wheel, speedometer on the left and tachometer on the right. The tachometer position ends up being a little higher and easier to see through the steering wheel, and so I think that's a better spot for it. Since I went with a 5" speedo and tach (actually 4.5" hole) I will need to enlarge the hole for at least the speedometer. Interestingly, since the tach is a pedestal mount rather than dash mount, it tapers down and fits in the hole there just fine. However that doesn't go all the way up to the bezel, so I have to decide what I want to do there. More thinking required.

I do think I'm going to put the Factory Five supplied green and blue indicator lights between the speedo and tach for the turn signal indicator and the high beam indicator. They include a third light (red) but I don't think I'll use that. I'm not planning on any idiot light senders since I'm using real gauges.

Factory Five does include a couple switches and a momentary push button. I don't think I will use those. The push button (for starter or whatnot) feels low quality. The toggle switches feel good enough quality, but there's only two of them and I need a good number more. I do want to use toggle switch covers, and I also want those switches to be uniform. So I will probably just buy what I need there. But, I'm realizing I need to start thinking about those and ordering them, because electrical (and the dashboard) are impending.

The real accomplishment today was finishing up the return lines, pressure regulator, and hoses for the fuel system. I still need to order a plug for the pressure regulator (it has two inlets for some reason) but I made a hose, bent the lines, and otherwise it's finished up and connected. Fortunately I was able to get away with not making a hose between the hard lines and the pressure regulator, the lengths worked out perfectly. I need to buy a couple more hard lines (I kinked one, oops) and I can get the pressure side completed.

The Summit Racing brand fuel hose I bought I'll say I'm disappointed with. I'm sure part of the reason is because I'm used to aircraft grade fuel hoses, but I don't feel like these are good quality or would hold up to much of anything. Of course the fittings I've got are also aluminum and not stainless steel like what's on aircraft so they're lower quality too, but those at least feel sturdy enough. These hoses are worse than Aeroquip for sure. I'm not completely sure if I'll stick with them, but I'll at least put it together this way and do a leak check. There will only be three fuel hoses (everything else hard lines, rails, or fittings) so I can replace them easily enough later on if need be. And none of them are in particularly bad locations.

So, get a few more things at the auto parts store probably tomorrow, and make some more progress over the weekend towards finishing up the fuel lines.

The good part is that I'm effectively one hard line away from finishing up the fuel system (well, two given what I'm going to do differently on the supply side) and know exactly what I'm going to do there. I'm getting closer and closer to the point of the electrical system work needing to start.

The Holley fuel pressure regulator and bracket look just like the ones we used in the 70's and 80's.

Is that fuel like you showed made from PTFE? Goodridge makes some very high quality fuel hoses, but they're pretty spendy and you have to use their hose ends.

Balancer arrived! This thing looks nice...

View attachment 81579

That is a work of art.

 

[Ted]

The Holley fuel pressure regulator and bracket look just like the ones we used in the 70's and 80's.

That's funny, but not at all surprising. Not like there's much special required to regulate fuel pressure. They make these in all different ranges of pressures, etc. I just wish it came with fittings, or at least plugs for one of the fuel inlets. I can't imagine that many actually use both fuel inlets.

Is that fuel like you showed made from PTFE? Goodridge makes some very high quality fuel hoses, but they're pretty spendy and you have to use their hose ends.

I took a look at the listing in Summit, and it says it's not PTFE. Here's the description:

When our guys found this high-quality hose at such a good price, we thought they were trying to put one over on us. Luckily for you, this hose is just as good as the expensive stuff, without the big bill. Summit® stainless steel hose consists of a CPE (Chlorinated Polyethylene) inner tube with a partial stainless steel reinforcement inner braid. On top of that, we add a heavy-duty, protective, full stainless steel braid on the outside, making it exceptionally lightweight, flexible, and durable. Even better, our hose is designed to handle gasoline, oil, or coolant.

So the marketing department wrote that. I guess we'll see how well it does.

That is a work of art.

Yes, yes it is. I really am very happy with what they built.

 

[Ted]

Video on the balancer:

 

[Sac Arrow]

Don't you kind of have to, cough cough, run the engine, to know if it is working?

 

[Ted]

Don't you kind of have to, cough cough, run the engine, to know if it is working?

Fair point, and at this point it’s possible that they didn’t get the balance right or otherwise screwed up the trigger wheel. But the trigger wheel is made of ferrous metal (I’ve confirmed that) and is spaced back from the main balancer so that there shouldn’t be any interference hall effect. Perfectly centered so the teeth should be an equal distance from the sensor.

So, I have confidence in everything working. But like the rest of the car, it could fail catastrophically on first start.

Why would anyone be crazy enough to drive a car that someone built in a garage?

 

[Sac Arrow]

Fair point, and at this point it’s possible that they didn’t get the balance right or otherwise screwed up the trigger wheel. But the trigger wheel is made of ferrous metal (I’ve confirmed that) and is spaced back from the main balancer so that there shouldn’t be any interference hall effect. Perfectly centered so the teeth should be an equal distance from the sensor.

So, I have confidence in everything working. But like the rest of the car, it could fail catastrophically on first start.

Why would anyone be crazy enough to drive a car that someone built in a garage?

I suppose someone that flies an airplane that has lineage to kamikaze aircraft would be crazy enough.

 

[Ted]

I suppose someone that flies an airplane that has lineage to kamikaze aircraft would be crazy enough.

Yeah but despite the meme, their customer service is excellent.

 

[Sac Arrow]

Yeah but despite the meme, their customer service is excellent.

View attachment 81604

The irony of the whole thing, is that if they did still make them, there are people that would buy them...

 

[Ted]

The irony of the whole thing, is that if they did still make them, there are people that would buy them...

Yes, many...

 

[Ted]

This ended up being a productive weekend on the Cobra, at least it felt like it.

Yesterday the primary goal was making the brackets for the ignition coils to mount to the front of the cylinder heads. Lacking good metal working tools made this harder, but I was able to cut the brackets from some 16 gauge steel I bought. I would've liked thicker (1/8" would've been ideal) but I took some scrap metal and welded that in diagonally to add strength. My son wanted to help weld so he got his first experience doing an (assisted) weld. You can guess how it looks, but he was happy and proud of that.

Painted and holes drilled, they mount up well, I just need hardware and I'll get them mounted probably tomorrow evening with the coils on them. That'll be a nice milestone!

Now that they're made there are a few things I'd do differently. For one, I would've made the brackets so that the coils weren't quite at a 90 degree angle apart from eachother. The angle doesn't necessarily matter there, but it would look better if the coils were pointed more or less straight up, which I could've done. As I said thicker metal would've been nice, too. So if these ever crack during use (which I somewhat doubt they will), I'll change the design. For now, my son's welding will be visible.

Today I effectively finished up the high pressure fuel line routing. I'm done bending hard lines, but I do need to get one more fitting for the low side (a -6 female to female that I stole so I could finish the high side), and then rivet the clamps for the high pressure line over the crossover at the front. The fuel filter is in an area where changing the element will be easy, but if I ever have to change the physical filter housing itself, that will be harder. There are probably better places I could have located it if I'd bought some different length lines or decided to just buy a roll of hard line and a flaring tool to make my own custom lengths, but I decided to use what Factory Five provided. I'm not concerned about it but it is a future consideration. We'll see. The reality is that for the use that this car is likely to get, that filter will be fine for a couple decades before the housing has any chance of having an issue, and even the filter element will be a number of years between replacements. So I think it'll be fine.

I then realized that the next physical item that needed to go in place to move things along was the radiator. I've been resisting putting that on since the radiator then gets in the way of the front of the engine, but at this point the remaining items to go on the front of the engine are pretty minor. However the coolant hoses (and radiator itself) are physical items that need to be in place to help dictate where some of the other smaller items (high pressure fuel hose, wiring, etc.) will go. So that's exciting.

What that also means is that I'm close to needing to buy the HVAC components and get started working on that. My thought is that I will probably get the radiator on finish buttoning up the fuel system, get the cooling hoses routed, maybe even mount the radiator fan, and then those will be the next items that I need to start putting on.

Oh yeah, the radiator fan. That's something I've been thinking about. Factory Five includes an electric fan that's supposedly good enough. What they call for in the manual is attaching it with some brackets provided the factory shroud from the Mustang donor car (which I don't have), and then attaching that whole thing to the radiator. I don't plan on doing that, but I am trying to figure out what I do want to do there. On other cars where I've mounted electric fans I've run those through-the-radiator sorta zip ties and those have always worked. Theoretically they'll cut a hole in the radiator after a while but I've never had that happen on any I've owned.

However on this car I don't think I want to do that, because if I do, the plastic parts sticking through on the front will be very visible on the car whenever you're driving by. So I think I'm going to need to get some sort of aluminum or steel to make brackets to bolt to the back of the radiator, and then attach the fan to it. I need to think more about how that should work.

One other note. I think most of you who are following this thread are probably subscribed to my YouTube channel, but if not, I'd appreciate it you did. I'd originally figured nobody would subscribe to the channel, but at this point it's at nearly 220 subscribers (a lot of new subscribers from the Cloud Nine video I posted the other day!). Although a long ways away, there have been enough people subscribing that I think hitting 1k subscribers is actually a possibility, at which point I can start monetizing the channel, which I would plan to put towards Cloud Nine funding. As Bryan has said, it's not much if you're not one of the people with a million subscribers, but if the potential is there, it would be nice to get to the point where YouTube could pay for the hangar one day. Thanks!

 

[Hang 4]

When I put EDIS into my car, I used a bracket from the donor car for the coil. Basically just had to fabricate the attachment bits, but the part that held to coil was OEM fit. With a bit of wire wheel cleaning and some fresh paint, it looked like it belonged there.

 

[Ted]

When I put EDIS into my car, I used a bracket from the donor car for the coil. Basically just had to fabricate the attachment bits, but the part that held to coil was OEM fit. With a bit of wire wheel cleaning and some fresh paint, it looked like it belonged there.

Yeah, the thought had crossed my mind of trying to get the factory brackets from a 4.6 and then adapt those. Catch being that I don't have any around and really didn't want to go deal with pick-a-part to go find something. Maybe that's what I'll do if these break.

 

[Ted]

The latest video...

 

[Ted]

In a cool development, one of the guys on the MegaSquirt Facebook group saw my post about the balancer, said he had a spare EDIS8 module with connector, and is mailing it to me just to help me out with my project. That's a really nice thing of him to do and that'll get me to the point of starting to mount and figure out that part of the project. I still need connectors for the ignition coils and the crank sensor, easy enough.

No actual progress on the car tonight. It was dance lessons for the girls and that means getting home late. Plus I didn't get a chance to make it to the parts store for the few bolts I needed to bolt the ignition coils to the brackets so I could then put those on the engine.

 

[Ted]

As I'm working towards seeing a bunch of little systems getting buttoned up, one of the things that's come to mind is spark plug wires.

I want to go with good quality spark plug wires. Although the engine's not super high compression, I am expecting 400ish HP. My general go-to is 8.5mm MSD wires, mainly because the quality has always been consistently good. However now it seems MSD is under the Holley umbrella, but so is Accel (which has been consistently bad for me), and Mallory (which I have no opinion on). In other words, it seems like it's all the same company now, who knows how independent they are.

I've always bought spark plug wires as sets because I've always had cars that, well, didn't need anything custom. So I'm not sure who to go with in this case. The fact that I'm using EDIS (and thus need EDIS connectors on the ignition coil side) makes this a bit harder.

Any thoughts on who to go with, or if there is some other company I should be investigating?

 

[SoonerAviator]

As I'm working towards seeing a bunch of little systems getting buttoned up, one of the things that's come to mind is spark plug wires.

I want to go with good quality spark plug wires. Although the engine's not super high compression, I am expecting 400ish HP. My general go-to is 8.5mm MSD wires, mainly because the quality has always been consistently good. However now it seems MSD is under the Holley umbrella, but so is Accel (which has been consistently bad for me), and Mallory (which I have no opinion on). In other words, it seems like it's all the same company now, who knows how independent they are.

I've always bought spark plug wires as sets because I've always had cars that, well, didn't need anything custom. So I'm not sure who to go with in this case. The fact that I'm using EDIS (and thus need EDIS connectors on the ignition coil side) makes this a bit harder.

Any thoughts on who to go with, or if there is some other company I should be investigating?

I've got Ford Racing 9mm plug wires on my 351w and they are of great quality. Still look new after 4 years or so, and are VERY tight on the plug leads. It actually takes a good bit of effort to get them to release. The plug-ends are 45-degrees so it keeps them away from the manifolds/headers, for what that's worth.

 

[Ted]

I've got Ford Racing 9mm plug wires on my 351w and they are of great quality. Still look new after 4 years or so, and are VERY tight on the plug leads. It actually takes a good bit of effort to get them to release. The plug-ends are 45-degrees so it keeps them away from the manifolds/headers, for what that's worth.

I hadn't thought about that, good idea. I think that's what I went with on my Town Car and they were good. I wonder if they'd either make a custom set or get me the parts for a "make your own" set. 9mm would be better than 8.5...

 

[SoonerAviator]

I hadn't thought about that, good idea. I think that's what I went with on my Town Car and they were good. I wonder if they'd either make a custom set or get me the parts for a "make your own" set. 9mm would be better than 8.5...

I guess it depends on what how much "make your own" you would need to do. Are you anticipating that the lengths would vary a lot from the factory distributor location? They were more than ample for my application, but I didn't have much of anything to work around (engine accessories, headers) and was using the standard electronic dizzy, not an EDIS plug set. I also doubt you'd notice any difference in performance from 8.5 to 9mm, especially if you are using individual coil packs with short lengths.

Maybe something like this?
https://www.americanmuscle.com/ford-9mm-plugwires-7995-blue-universal.html

 

[Ted]

I guess it depends on what how much "make your own" you would need to do. Are you anticipating that the lengths would vary a lot from the factory distributor location? They were more than ample for my application, but I didn't have much of anything to work around (engine accessories, headers) and was using the standard electronic dizzy, not an EDIS plug set. I also doubt you'd notice any difference in performance from 8.5 to 9mm, especially if you are using individual coil packs with short legnths.

Yeah, the reality is 8.5 vs 9 I won't see a difference.

I asked Ford on their chat page and they said to check with someone like Taylor Spark Plug Wires:

http://www.taylorvertex.com/spark-plugs/

So I may give them a call and see what they say. That could be a good option, they do make plug wire sets for EDIS and they advertise a lot of custom stuff, looks like $100 or so is about their average cost for a set of wires for a V8, which seems reasonable enough.

 

[Ted]

Well, looked at Taylor wires some more. Turns out they're just up the road in Grandview MO (SE side of KC area). So I'll probably contact them and then talk about what makes the more sense. First I figure I'll go ahead and bolt up the ignition coils, though, and I need to order some more parts to keep things going.

 

[Hang 4]

I used Magnecor, they do custom ends. Couple wire gauges and connector quality was decent. Don't remember how spendy they were.

 

[Ted]

I used Magnecor, they do custom ends. Couple wire gauges and connector quality was decent. Don't remember how spendy they were.

That was the company I couldn't remember! I had a set of their wires on my '82 XJ-S back in the day. 8.5mm, and as I recall they were spendy but it was a Jag V12 so there were a total of 13 wires, and it was sort of an odd one.

 

[Ted]

Taylor wires eMailed me back. They said it would be $161 plus shipping for the wires, and I would just have to give them measurements they wouldn't let me pick up the wires, get them cut exactly, and then send them back.

Well, kinda like Innovator's West on the balancer, here I am hoping to find a local company that would work with me and me wanting to support the local economy, and then there's not necessarily any benefit to using them as opposed to someone else.

But I should contact MSD and see what they say about the 8.5mm wires and go from there.

Here's another question: if I wanted to make my own, does anyone have a set of spark plug wire crimpers? Not sure if I want to buy that tool or not...

 

[Ted]

I got the EDIS8 module in the mail yesterday. It's in remarkably good (aesthetic) condition and wires on the pigtail are also good. So I'll plan on putting this one in the car and we'll see if/how it works.

So now's where I have to start thinking about spark plug wire routing. Because EDIS is wasted spark and fires in pairs, you have to decide how you want which pairs to fire. The cam I bought uses the 289 firing order, see below:

So given the above, the pairs are:

1-6
3-5
4-7
2-8

I need to look at this a bit more, but being a cross plane crankshaft the ned result is that each pair is going to have one on the "on-side" bank and one on the "off side" bank. Which isn't a big deal but it does mean more routing.

The wiring harness for this will require some work, including shielded wires for some of the signals, adding in capacitors in a couple wires, etc. Not anything that's necessarily inherently challenging but it's more than just wire up and go. See the diagram below:

Again, not a big deal, just some attention to detail that must be paid.

The EDIS module normally mounts under the hood. I think I'm going to make another bracket (like my ignition module brackets) and then mount it to one of the metal square tubes on the passenger side. The driver's side is rather busy at this point, and the passenger side is also where the crank sensor is located, so that makes more sense.