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Old 10-21-2002, 08:42 PM
Jack21 Jack21 is offline
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Cobra Make, Engine: Classic Roadsters, Tweaked 351W, T-5Z, CRII Tech Support Team.
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Couple of other tips that may help out.

Oops. Forgot the ground strap. The engine must be grounded to the frame, and the engine, and frame must be grounded to the battery ground.

And particularly on a Cobra, because it vibrates more than most cars do (and if something can jiggle loose, it will) run redundant ground wires back to a common point, and ground the common point to the battery.

Murphys law on Cobra electrical systems (given the above vibration characteristics) is; all crimped connections will eventually fail due to vibration, strain, or corrosion. Meaning what worked fine for years on your LTD, won't work on your Cobra.

Remove all factory crimped connectors, then cut the wire to the correct length to loosley fit the application. (You can remove a lot of excess wire from pre-fab wiring harnesses this way) Slide a piece of shrink wrap tubing over the wire to be connected (Radio Shack, or hardware store electrical dept has shrink wrap tubing). For a splice, use a butt splice connector. A termination a spade lug, or ring lug. Use non-covered terminals, or remove the vinyl insulation (that's what we're using the shrink wrap for) Crimp the wire with hand crimpers to the connector to make a good physical connection. Then solder the connection. Take a little non-moly wheel bearing grease (with a Q-tip) and coat the connection. Put the shrink wrap over the connection, and heat it with a hair drier until it's tight. (I use a $20 hobby shop Mono-Coat gun/blower)It's time consuming and tedious, but you have a connection that will never vibrate loose, or pull loose, or corrode.

MSD system caution. If you use the MSD accessory parallel wired capacitor on the power side of the box because of radio noise, or whatever, the capictor terminals must be protected (insulated) at all times from metal contact AND SKIN CONTACT. Even with the power off, and the battery disconnected! Laying a wrench, or your forearm across those terminals, once the capacitor has been charged by powering the ignition on, will do some serious damage.

Last edited by Jack21; 10-21-2002 at 08:48 PM..
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