[Ryankey]

Would there be any noticeable benefits from upgrading the following 396 components:

stock coil to high voltage MSD coil
7 mm spark plug wires to 8 or 9 mm
stock dist. cap to MSD distributor cap

Thanks!!

 

[IgnitionMan]

The MSD Blaster II and III series coils are quite good, and may be used for ballast resistor (point), HEI and Capacitor discharge (MSD 5/6/7) ignition applications.

As all spiral core wire is essentially the same construction, no matter who's name is on it, go for the 8mm stuff. I have used 7 and 8mm spiral core wire sets from Borg-Warner, the Select series, with same results and lifespan as sets costing three times as much, and having some pretty famous names.

As long as you use a distributor cap with copper terminals, there won't be a problem with performance, aluminum terminals aren't meant for performance work, and will easily form arcing buildup on the terminals inside the dist cap.

For GM window type distributors, I use either the NAPA RR165 cap/RR167R rotor Has socket type wore connections, or the RR167R rotor and MSD 8435 cap, is red, has HEI type terminals, fits point distributor.

Please remember, if you use the above MSD cap, you will come up without a coil wire if you use an off the shelf HEI wire set. I have found a few Ford engines have the correct wire lengths and ends (Duraspark wire sets) to work with the MSD cap, and gives the coil wire ewith them (Interesting That Ford has some wire sets that are fine for our better GM engines, Ford always seems to put things on the wrong end of things).

 

[66 bowtie]

4 wires go with taylor. Not that much and work great...

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[68Malibu Blown 406]

Unless you are experiencing ignition related missfire now, there will be no advantage powerwise with any of the above components.

If its working properly there will be no change.

 

[Guest]

Ditto 68malibu. You will only see improvement if your existing ignition system had problems.

RH

 

[Strohm]

Ryankey,

If you don't already have electronic ignition, I would do that first. The Pertronix Ignitor works great and simply replaces your points.

One thing you should do if you upgrade those ignition components is widen your spark plug gap. With a electronic ignition, a HP coil and HP wires, you should be able to go .050 to 0.060 without any problems. This is where you will see an effect on performance.