I'm rewiring my car with a rebelwire kit, and now looking at my old sparkplug wires maybe it's time to upgrade. Are there any affordable wires that are good? Or is this an area I need to go with msd or something? Fwiw I'm running a sbc and hei. Thanks in advance!
Do you think that it would be worth the trouble you might get with a cheap set? Don’t be so tight!!!
Yes. O'Reilly A/P carries very fine quality 7mm gray color spark plug wire sets that are amazingly affordable. They are pre-***embled with factory ends on both ends. If you ask, they have a book that allows you to view each set by it's component parts: end style and lengths of the individual wires in the set. By planning ahead and measuring the lengths of the wires you'll need to create a neat, tight-fitting wire set on your specific engine (rather than just depending upon the make/model/year catalog listing) you can select the ideal set for your specific motor. If one or two wires in the most-correct set are still not quite right, they sell individual wires to fill in...or, you can buy the complete set one wire at a time (it's more expensive this way, however). I think the brightly colored aftermarket wires detract from the appearance of a really neat, well-thought-out engine compartment and absolutely kill any semblence of traditional flavor...especially when they are haphazardly installed - you see this all the time on otherwise very nice cars. I'm a nut on engine compartment neatness, and these O'Reilly A/P wire sets have met all my needs...including the demands of my budget. If you'd like, PM me and I'll send you the set # I use for over-the-valve-cover SBC engines with HEI and Chevelle-style cast iron exhaust manifolds. Hope this helps. Just my $.02.
Like what has already been said ... Do it right the first time ... I like to run the wires down the back of the block and up ... like the factory did it ... back in the 50's and 60's ... I think that way really cleans up the engine but it does take a fair amount of time to do and get to looking right. Since the photo was taken ... I have made the alternator and A/C wiring a lot neater ( changed to black wiring )
The PerTronix 7mm from Summuit are both reasonable priced and very good, like these http://store.summitracing.com/partdetail.asp?autofilter=1&part=PNX%2D708101&N=700+400428+115&autoview=sku
Been doing my own for years. Napa has wire/terminals/boots for just about any configuration you can think of. One customer brought me a set of taylors about a year ago. I installed em & they seemed allright at the time, but i saw the truck about a month ago....half the wires had cracks in the insulation for most of the length of the wire. Sad part is, this guy might have driven it 100 miles in that length of time...
The make your own with Beldon stuff from NAPA is definatly better than most cheap sets. Yuo will want some tools for the job, but you only buy those once for life. Then you can use the bubmle bee wire that Moss sells for traditional British sports cars. It looks like old Lucas stuff. Hell, it might even be Lucas stuff!
I guess it all depends on what your version of cheap is. If cheap to you is $75 then yes, if cheap is $20 probably not.
I'd go with a good quality replacement set of wires. Unless you have some big time high powered ignition system, I don't believe that you need the over the top racing wire set ups. Some use them for looks. I don't think that they are necessary for a street driven hotrod. Fitted wires are not cheap. Wires on your hotrod will not be subjected to the oil leaks and and other destructive issues that an unmaintained daily driver has to put up with.
The Jalopy Journal
