Aftermarket Coil On Plug Sets, Worth It?

[JPR01GT]

Hi all, newbie here, I just bought a 2001 GT a couple weeks ago and after taking it home and driving it around some it was very clear it had a couple bad coils (no CEL but a noticeable skip/misfire under heavier load). I brought it to a shop and they identified which ones were bad and swapped them out with generic aftermarket ones. While the problem has definitely improved a lot it is still a little noticeable so I think I'd like to just replace them all myself and not have to worry about them. The big question for me is do I stick with Motorcraft (I had Motorcraft SP493 plugs installed) or go the performance route (MSD, Summit, Accell, etc...) Any advice is greatly appreciated and thanks in advance

 

[bdcardinal]

No performance advantage to the aftermarket coils. There are plenty of threads on other forums where people have issues with the aftermarket coils with a higher frequency to the Motorcraft coils. Actually I have seen engines make less power with aftermarket coils, mostly on Terminators.

 

[trinity_gt]

I'm still on factory COPs though I've had to reduce the plug gap to eliminate misfires under boost.

For normally-aspirated operation, the factory COPs are absolutely fine with a factory-recommended gap of 0.054".

A higher-voltage COP might allow me to open the plug gap back up (right now I'm at ~0.032") but I doubt there's a power advantage there since I'm not misfiring now (not evident in the SOTP nor is the PCM picking up any misfires...)

 

[JPR01GT]

Thanks for the responses, it's looking like cost will be the biggest factor at this point and it's time to start calling some dealers in the area. If the Motorcrafts are too much I'll go with the Accells as from what I'm seeing they're about half as much