Pelican Parts Forums - MSD Heli Core Wires "Install Instructions"

After reading many post on spark plug wires to determine which brand I wanted to use for my turbo conversion I decided to be a contributor and went forward with making my own this past weekend. I have always been favorable towards MSD and after looking into the prices for Beru and Magnecore the use of MSD Heli core wire would save some serious $$$.
I started Saturday with a trip to the local V8 performance shop where I was able to purchase the MSD heli core universal 8CLY spark wire kit for $64.00 http://www.pelicanparts.com/support/smileys/clap.gif much cheaper then I was thinking, I also decided to throw in a couple extra $$ and purchase some black wire separators to help route my new plug wires that I would be making.

The kit comes complete with dual and standard crimp terminals but when dealing with the 911 distributor you will need to go with the standard terminal.

(1) First step is to strip the wire, to do this you must insert the SP wire into the stripping slot of the stripper/crimper device that comes with the kit.

(2) After stripping the sleeve, fold the conductor back along the wire and position the wire into the terminal, you can bend the tabs slightly to help hold the wire and terminal in place.

(3) Slide the terminal and wire into the stripper/crimper device, the W shaped groove should be on the sides of the tab. Make sure wire is completely pressed into the terminal and the conductor is still bent under the plug wire. This is were a Vise is highly recommended.

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(4) Apply pressure with the Vise.

(5) After removing from the Vise I inspected the position of the conductor and gently tugged on the wires to ensure a good connection. You can pretty much tell you got a good crimp just by looking at the wire, so do not tug to hard.

(6) Now that the hard part is done all you need to do is bend the terminals 90 degrees and install the boots, I added a little WD40 to help slide them on, I did run out of WD40 half way but managed with some KY jelly I had laying around http://www.pelicanparts.com/support/.../smileysex.gif

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(7) Before installing the Beru connector ends I measured out each cylinder for the proper routing and used the wire separators to guide them into place. This is really an added bonus cause you can clean up your engine compartment and also reduce the length of wire needed resulting in less resistance (more to come on this)

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(8) Most important I would recommend that you use a multimeter during each step to ensure that there is no resistance lost in the wire due to a bad crimp or broken wire. Before adding terminals and Beru connector ends I would measure each wire and Beru connector. You can also add dielectric grease to the wire and brass terminal if you want to improve the reliability.

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Maximum resistance using the Heli core wires was 6.7K for the #6 cylinder, this was also including the 2.5K of resistance from the Beru connector ends, unfortunately I re-used my connector ends so I do not know what they would be new. Final results were:

#1 3.2K
#2 3.4K
#3 3.8K
#4 5.1K
#5 5.8K
#6 6.7K

Would be interested to see if others have taken this measurement with Magnecore as a comparison.

Overall I am very pleased with the end result and the car is running like a champ, so if you have the time and patience and do not want to spend big $$$ this is a very viable option