| thirtysixford | -- 06-19-2024 @ 4:11 PM |
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I've been told many times "If it ain't broke don't fix it", but there's no adventure in that. A few days ago, I decided the yellow Accel wires on my 59AB looked out of place and I had a brand new black set in my parts stash. Seemed like a quick, easy swap. The old wires were 7mm with a steel core and the new set were 8mm suppression wires, universal fit, you cut to length and add the distributor end terminals. I have a spare timing cover and distributor that a friend set up on his distributor machine. So I popped the wires off the plugs, un-clipped the crab style cap and leaving the zip ties on, arranged the old set on my counter. I used the spare timing cover with distributor as a guide and carefully took one old wire at a time and cut a new wire and crimped on the boot and terminal and installed it in the new cap. Everything went really well and in no time I had a new set of wires and cap ready to install. This is when things began to deteriorate. When I got the new set back in place on the engine, the cap wouldn't click into place on the distributor. No matter how much I tried, I could rotate the cap, it obviously was not indexed with the notch in the cap. Not much room with the belt and water pumps in the way. After fighting with it, I decided to just remove the old distributor (2 bolts) and look things over on the workbench. When I removed the passenger side bolt, it had a 1/2 inch head like I expected a 5/16 bolt to have. The drivers side had a 9/16 head suggesting a 3/8 bolt! After removal, sure enough one 5/16-24 fine and one 3/8-16 course bolt. What the heck. Looking at the spare cover, they were both 5/16-18. I can understand if you stripped a mounting hole opening it up to 3/8, but why the fine thread in the 5/16 hole? The old distributor was missing the small piece of 1/8 keystock that fits into the notch in the cap to index it. Also the old dist, was cast iron and the new one is aluminum not that it matters. Now that I had the old unit off the car, I intended to use the new one but that meant I would have to drill out one mounting hole to 3/8, I didn't want to do that. I ended up replacing the old points and fabricated a square locating pin. I then was able to reinstall everything using a new gasket and rubber vacuum seal. Car started right up and runs ok. All this just to change plug wire colors......
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| ford38v8 | -- 06-19-2024 @ 5:21 PM |
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Two eye openers for me in your sad story… The old wires had a steel core ??? Not copper??? The new wires have a suppressor core? That’s not good either. One more thing, I never just crimp my wires, I crimp and solder everything. No unplanned resistance, please. Alan
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| thirtysixford | -- 06-19-2024 @ 6:14 PM |
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Alan, my mistake old ones are copper, I have a working radio so I thought the new wires might help with the noise.
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| ford38v8 | -- 06-19-2024 @ 8:48 PM |
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I think the ignition interference on an AM radio is more entertaining than any AM programing you'd get today. That, and the squeek-squawk-hummmm you get while tuning between stations. Back in the day, AM radio sounded pretty good up on lover's lane when the windows were all fogged up... Alan
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