Bad Plug Wires

95Cobra302

Founding Member
Apr 9, 2002
394
3
19
Daytona Beach, FL
Anyway to tell if the plug wires are going bad?? Trying to chase down a probelm with the cobra for 2 years. There is some slight discoloration on the wire's near the boot that goes on the distributor. They are FRPP wires I have had on there for about 5 years. The car just sits outside with a cover over it. If it ran great I would be able to drive it!!
 
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In my experience FRPP wires are **** out of the box. Might want to invest in a good set of Accel wires anyway. To test them, you can run a test light near the boots and see if you get any arcs. Usually FRPP wires arc when they are brand new.

Kurt
 
I've had the car for 10 years and have only ran FRPP wires on them with no problems. Oh yeah, I started the cobra up for the first time in about 5 months. Started up perfect, but I noticed while it was idling for a couple mins the rpm's would jump up a couple hundred. When I leave if running for about 20 min. it does it a few times. When you rev it up it stumbles really bad, but after the rpm's magically bump up a little, it seems to rev up fine. Sounds like it might be intermitted spark, it still have the original dizzy so maybe the pip or something with the ol' dizzy.

This car is my pride and joy and have had it half of my adult life. I'm the only one who has ever touched or worked on it, I've got to get this figured out. Anyone have any ideas??
 
Anyway to tell if the plug wires are going bad?? Trying to chase down a probelm with the cobra for 2 years. There is some slight discoloration on the wire's near the boot that goes on the distributor. They are FRPP wires I have had on there for about 5 years. The car just sits outside with a cover over it. If it ran great I would be able to drive it!!

One test I've used after the "OHM" test is the nighttime test.
 
I've had the car for 10 years and have only ran FRPP wires on them with no problems. Oh yeah, I started the cobra up for the first time in about 5 months. Started up perfect, but I noticed while it was idling for a couple mins the rpm's would jump up a couple hundred. When I leave if running for about 20 min. it does it a few times. When you rev it up it stumbles really bad, but after the rpm's magically bump up a little, it seems to rev up fine. Sounds like it might be intermitted spark, it still have the original dizzy so maybe the pip or something with the ol' dizzy.

This car is my pride and joy and have had it half of my adult life. I'm the only one who has ever touched or worked on it, I've got to get this figured out. Anyone have any ideas??

Those are the typical signs of a distributer going bad.

Kurt
 
Just buy a rebuilt stock one. They are about $100 with core exchange at the autoparts store. The MSD ones have reliability issues. Most of the guys who have tried them on this website didn't get 1000 miles out of it. I can't remember which auto parts store it was, but they didn't have one listed for a Cobra. If that's the case, just have them look it up as a GT, it's the exact same distributer.

Kurt