Spoke with a guy named Jesse at Taylor Cable products about my 15 month old Taylor plug wires burning into and becoming very brittle at the dist. cap terminals, I sent him this picture and the invoice (at his request) where I special ordered them from Pep Boys, after hearing nothing from him I decided to call, he said he received the pic and invoice and that management was reviewing them, he then proceeded to tell me the plug wires looked like they had been on fire! WHAT lol, how can the terminal ends be burnt but not the wire or covering itself? so basically he is saying my wires at one time had been on fire and we all know he doesn't know what he is talking about, waiting for him to get back to me on it....... I can easily break the metal terminal into bits with my fingers if I try
I've used Taylor Wires on several of our cars here successfully .. I've never seen THIS kind of damage to the metal parts .. I'd suspect the metal was substandard ..( Chinese maybe).. A lot of manufacturers are importing THEIR products from China and being quiet about it .. I'd stay on Taylors case about these.. Letusno how this turns out . Thanks Cometized (Chip)
what brand distributor cap are you using? does it have brass colored terminals or silver colored terminals in it? what type of ignition system are you using? do you put dielectric grease on the plug wire terminals before putting them into the cap? ive seen similar terminals to that. i think i attributed it to a combination of a cheap distributor cap (silver colored terminals) a high energy ignition and no dielectric grease to fight the corrosion. the dissimilar metals of copper and aluminum with high electricity flowing through them will form corrosion quickly, which will build up resistance, which will generate heat and burn up the copper terminal. i would have expected taylor to have asked about the distributor cap to see if it was copper terminal cap or aluminum one. i put dielectric grease on all ends of all spark plug wires i work with. it prevents this from happening and makes it easy to take them off next time that has to happen. good luck with taylor. if they dont do anything for you, i would get a new end kit and just replace the bad ends. use a cap with copper terminals and dielectric grease.
-It's a Pertronix distributor, it has copper/brass colored terminals, I had to go look seeing as you asked lol
besides the possibility that cheap materials could have been used, i would suspect that the wire terminal was not touching the cap terminal.
also i just had a pertronix III distributor cause missing under load above 3000 rpm on a 363 stroker motor. we replaced the pertonix distributor with a msd and it ran perfectly. until this, ive always had great results with pertonix products.
There you go, a high energy spark that's jumping from a thin metal object will result in excessive heat, giving it a burned appearance... Also the spark is creating ozone that contributes to corrosion...
Well I have to disagree with you on the not touching, there were 4 wires like those pictured, two of the four were burnt into the other 2 were black and brittle, they were run on my other 351w which ran fine except motor was smoking.
that type of plug wire end is hard to put on and not make contact. i believe you in your confidence that it was making contact. i hope taylor steps up and at least sends you a new distributor wire end kit. i would suggest changing out the cap on the distributor also. im sure it doesnt look very nice on the 4 holes that those wires are in.
bingo!.. give this man a prize! physics is fun Here's my dirty penny.. now, I just shoot from the hip and mean no offense if it points any fingers. Seen this many times and some times it's exactly for the reasons Bryant already mentioned above. Your coil will usually get hollering hot too. Fire is not entirely out of the question either depending on its location. So, here it is. Those wire ends/terminals had unwanted space between the metal contact points and the wires core conductor. As to what caused it? Could be heat.. could be moisture.. could also be installation damage as the wires get pushed and pulled on too. Or even a bit of all of the above. Basically doesn't matter how it happens and anything that weakens it makes it more susceptible to quicker rates of failure. This is fairly common type damage too, I know damned well that I've seen many and myself do it to a few individual wires through the years, problems increasingly cropping up when space is really tight and we try to push the wires on right at or nearing the wire to terminal crimp-straps junction point.. rather than pushing on the very top of the boot(directly opposite the open end).. and directly down towards the plug or cap. Sometimes we flat out forget.. and sometimes it's just damned tough to pull and push in the best possible place on the terminal. IOW, it's sometimes easy to degrade and start small tears in the metal and cause the wire to slip, crack, split, or completely separate. Then you have a nasty gap that can ionize, arc weld, and heat thinner metal until there's no tomorrow. Sometimes it's cumulative and goes unnoticed for a while and doesn't immediately present itself until things erode to greater degree or fall apart completely with the inevitable heat buildup. The more you monkey with them on and off during this fragile state, the quicker the failure rate. Speaking of heat.. moderate amounts header heat can also accelerate this viscous cycle/degradation process as well. The stress on the metal and the connections here are usually cumulative without a doubt and some wires are more fragile in metallurgy and construction than some others. You can also cross arc the cap internally(bad reluctor index/too much advance) and end up overheating things in a real hurry. Sealed caps/ disty housings are also another bigger issue for some too... major no-no.. in wider temperature varying climates such as our mid-west(40-50 degree day/night temp spreads sometimes) and moister areas like... Florida. This is usually somewhat evident with tracking marks/odd burn patterns on the electrode and does cumulative damage and only weakens the areas for promoting and quickening gap erosion over time. Sorry.. short on time.. really rough and randomly layed out thoughts.. good luck with it.
