plug wires
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Teching In
Joined: Sep 2016
Posts: 13
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From: nj- south florida
plug wires i just recently put new msd 8.5 super conductors on my 02 camaro ls1. has cam and supporting mods. changed the wires about 2 weeks ago and everything was fine i go to take car out today and it feels like theres a loss of power and sounds like its bogging a little. all wires are connected tight. just started this today. any one have any ideas?
Joined: Nov 2003
Posts: 6,216
Likes: 236
From: Wichita KS / Rancho San Diego
I put a new set of MSD's on my car as I was changing plugs and the old MSD's had about 100k on them. I then developed a hi-rpm misfire that took forever for me to chase down, but it was the new wires. It was a relearning experience of the old proverb "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Best thing to do is put a scanner on the car. That's what enabled us to chase it down. The misfire would travel from cylinder to cylinder as we moved the wires around.
Best thing to do is put a scanner on the car. That's what enabled us to chase it down. The misfire would travel from cylinder to cylinder as we moved the wires around.
Sometimes testing the continuity and resistance of the new plug wire with a volt meter can help spot a bad wire. It's easy to do after taking the wires out of the box. Friends have laughed at this as being OCD but I've never stuck a bad plug wire new or old on a car
11 Second Club
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 1,000
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Always ohm test the wires, even new out the box. MSD wires are not what they used to be. As I will explain in more detail below. This is going to sound like I'm a shill for one of the other wire manufacturers but I assure you I'm not. I don't even live in the USA.
I had a set of red super conductors on my first heads/cam ls1 car back in the early 2000's and they went for 70,000 miles being raced street and track and still ohm tested OK after all of that. To the point I sold the set of wires on ebay when I sold all the go fast bits from the car and then sold the car. I didn't even have wire protectors on them. They were on there as is, and the car had 1 3/4 4-1 headers on it.
FF to 2015.. I buy a new set of super conductors for my Camaro in sig.. they tested 40-60 ohms out the box. Well they lasted only 4,000 miles before one of them died completely, and when I ohm tested all the other most of them except maybe two were much higher ohms than when new. I'm talking in the thousands.
Now it gets even worse. Being stupid I bought another new set of MSD super conductors but the longer ones made to clear taller valve covers as I was planning to install my small bore ls7 heads and T&D rockers on the car. I ohm tested them new out the box, as I always do, and 7 of them were 40-60 ohms, and one measured 1000 or so ohms. I double and triple checked it with the meter and nothing changed so then I looked in the wire and i could see it wasn't crimped properly on the coil end like the others were. I wrestled with it to try fix it but I couldn't and gave up.
Buy Moroso wires or something else or you will be down on power in no time.
I had a set of red super conductors on my first heads/cam ls1 car back in the early 2000's and they went for 70,000 miles being raced street and track and still ohm tested OK after all of that. To the point I sold the set of wires on ebay when I sold all the go fast bits from the car and then sold the car. I didn't even have wire protectors on them. They were on there as is, and the car had 1 3/4 4-1 headers on it.
FF to 2015.. I buy a new set of super conductors for my Camaro in sig.. they tested 40-60 ohms out the box. Well they lasted only 4,000 miles before one of them died completely, and when I ohm tested all the other most of them except maybe two were much higher ohms than when new. I'm talking in the thousands.
Now it gets even worse. Being stupid I bought another new set of MSD super conductors but the longer ones made to clear taller valve covers as I was planning to install my small bore ls7 heads and T&D rockers on the car. I ohm tested them new out the box, as I always do, and 7 of them were 40-60 ohms, and one measured 1000 or so ohms. I double and triple checked it with the meter and nothing changed so then I looked in the wire and i could see it wasn't crimped properly on the coil end like the others were. I wrestled with it to try fix it but I couldn't and gave up.
Buy Moroso wires or something else or you will be down on power in no time.
Last edited by Launch; Dec 3, 2018 at 02:26 AM.
