I decided to upgrade the ignition on my daily driver yesterday. It's had a difficult time starting up since the day I bought it last June so I figured the ignition would be the best place to start upgrading in order to (hopefully) fix the problem..

After looking at the distributer cap and pulling out one of the plug's, I realised they were either the origional factory 17 year old components or not too far off. The plug's were all fouled up and the gap's were too big on three of them. The wires were really dry and cracked due to the heat throughout the years and the cap and rotor had both seen better days.

I went ahead and purchased the following:

*MSD cap
*MSD rotor
*Taylor 8mm pro wires
*NGK plugs.

I'll be ugrading the coil next paycheck with a new factory delco unit.


The plug's were a pain, but no worse than on my LT1. Four were accessed from above, the other four from below.


All I can say is WOW!! What a difference it made. The car start's right up and idle's as smooth as a Lexus :thumbsup:

Throttle response is much better and the car pulls a lot harder throughout the rpm's. The biggest difference is out on the highway. She run's a lot smoother and there's definetely a notable power increase.

Even though I haven't driven it much since the yesterday, I wouldn't surprised if I got an increase in gas milage as well - infact, I'm betting on it.

Never underestimate the importance of a properly running ignition system. If you're ignition system is not up to par, it doesn't matter what other mod's you do, you'll never see their full potential.

It's a relitevely simple, cheap and very effective upgrade and if you're still running the old factory stuff, take my advice and change it right away.

 

And you see ads claiming an increase in performance by using some wizzy new style of spark plug. Chances are a new stock replacement plug will do the same thing for a fraction of the cost.

My race car uses an NGK race plug but it's no different in style than a stock style plug and doesn't cost any more. Advantages of using a platinum plug is when plugs are difficult to access. They don't wear out as quickly so you don't need to change them as often unless the engine is worn out and fouls the plugs quickly. I normally change the plugs, cap and rotor in my daily driver about every 5 years. Plugs are cheap. Plug wires just depend on the condition but 10 years on a set of wires is pushing it.

The race car uses top of the line ignition components and is maintained regulary.