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Drain Coolant
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Since you'll need to remove the upper radiator hose, you need to
drain the coolant from your radiator. The draincock is located
on the lower corner of the radiator on the driver's side. Depending
on the model and year of your car, you may have to remove the lower
air dam or an access panel to access the draincock.
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Disconnect Upper Radiator Hose
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You probably only need to disconnect the hose from the radiator
and loosen the clamp on the thermostat housing, since you can rotate
the hose out of the way rather than disconnect the end at the thermostat
housing. The OEM hose clamps use a 10mm bolt with a Philips screw insert, so
either a wrench or screwdriver should work.
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Remove Spark Plug Wires From Coils
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Since you're removing the OEM coils, you need to disconnect all 6
of the spark plug wires. Just grasp the boot and pull. Note that
OEM-style Magnacor wires are shown; the OEM wires are black.
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Remove Spark Plug Cover Plate
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Remove the OEM black plastic panel the covers the the access holes
for the front spark plugs. There are eight 10mm bolts that have
Philips screw inserts, so again, either tool will work.
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Completely Remove Front Bank Spark Plug Wires
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Get them out of the way. You'll need to replace them or
at least replace the coil-side connectors as part of this
upgrade.
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Rotate Radiator Hose Out of the Way
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You can either remove the hose or just loosen the clamp
and rotate the hose out of the way so that you have room
to work.
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Remove Wire Stay From Coil Bracket
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The yellowish plastic wire stay (looks like a thick zip-tie) needs
to be loosened so you can pull the wire bundle away from the bracket.
The stay is supposed to be reusable, but given its location and the
fact that it was nice and brittle from 70,000 miles of use, I just cut
it off. Your call.
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Remove OEM Ignition Coils
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There are three 12mm bolts, one 10mm bolt, one #2 Philips screw, and
one wiring harness to disconnect. On my car, the screw was really stuck
on there, and I was afraid of stripping it. The solution I came up with
was to use a 1/4" deep socket on my socket wrench and insert a #2 Philips
bit into the socket. That worked fine and is shown in the upper right
picture above. Also, for the bolt on the front of the valve cover behind
the black intercooler pipe, a ratcheting closed-end wrench works pretty well.
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Disassemble The OEM Wiring Harness
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There are 8mm nuts that secure the wires to the coils.
You'll need to remove these nuts so you can remove the wires
from the coils. You'll be re-using this harness, so
be careful not to damage it while you disassemble it.
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Install New Wiring Connectors
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The OEM ring terminals on the coil wiring harness will not work
with the MSD coils, so you'll have to cut them off. I don't know why
the color correction decided to make everything green in the second picture,
but just assume that all the green things are actually blue :-) I used
a little 1.5" length of wire to extend the harness a little. The new
terminals are just male partially insulated quick-disconnect connectors.
Using the same color wires as the OEM harness will make things less confusing.
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Gather New MSD Coils
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You'll want the MSD coils with the part number 8224, which
is the GM Two Tower Coil Pack.
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Remove Plastic Guard
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There's a little black plastic piece that helps make the
connection to the coil watertight, but the wiring connectors
I chose weren't long enough to penetrate this guard and make
a good connection. Thus I removed the guard. Just pop it out
carefully with a small flat-blade screwdriver.
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Test-Fit MSD Ignition Coils
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You'll need to figure out where the coils need to be mounted.
They need to be low enough to clear the hood, but high enough
so that you can get the plug wire on the terminal without
the radiator hose blocking it. Also try to minimize any interference
or rubbing on the radiator hose. I was unable to prevent the coils from
touching the hose, but I was able to make it so that most of
the contact occurs where there is the foam sleeve over the hose.
That will offer some degree of protection from wear.
Once you have the coils positioned to your satisfaction, mark the coils
so that you can position them exactly the same way once you
take the coils and bracket back off of the car.
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Fabricate Coil Bracket
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This is the part that will probably take some time. You'll
need to create some kind of bracket that will hold the coils
securely to the engine. I've seen some examples where people used
the OEM bracket lower holes and zip ties for the upper mounting
holes. I've also seen people make completely custom brackets.
I chose to add to the OEM bracket to allow me to securely mount the
MSD coils to it. I used some 1/8" aluminum stock (available at most
hardware stores, like Home Depot) and various nuts and bolts. I
used a Dremel, a file, and a drill to shape and cut the aluminum.
Be sure to make adequate holes in the aluminum parts for the wires
to feed through without risk of shorting out.
IMPORTANT NOTE!
I made a small mistake when fabricating the bracket, and
this came back to bite me later. Learn from my mistakes :-)
I covered up the hole in the lower right corner (looking
from the front) of the bracket where the screw for the
capacitor goes. When I later tried to insert the screw
into the hole, I found it didn't go in very far :-( Not the
end of the world, but I'd definitely not cover the hole
if I had it to do over again!
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Mount Coils On Bracket
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Now that you've made your bracket, attach the coils to it and
connect the wires to the coils. Although the wiring connections
were pretty secure as they were, I put a little drop of hot glue on
the back side of the connectors to make sure that they don't pop
out with vibration or age, and to decrease the possibility of
a wire popping loose and shorting out. For cosmetic reasons, I also
painted the aluminum parts I added with some black primer so the
modifications to the bracket wouldn't stand out so much.
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Reinstall the Coil Bracket
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Install your bracket back onto the car. As you can see,
I used the OEM bracket, so it mounts back on the car exactly like
it was from the factory. Make sure you get all four bolts and the
all-important screw for the capacitor. If you forget to reattach
this capacitor, you'll get nasty interference (popping noises) in
your speakers when you use your radio. Don't ask me how I know :-)
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Reattach Upper Radiator Hose
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Just like it came off... make sure to get the clamp nice and tight so
you don't have any leaks.
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Remove Coil End of Existing Plug Wires [optional]
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Since I already had a set of Magnecor wires on my car and didn't feel
like removing my plenum, I decided to just put new ends onto the
Magnecor wires. If you're making new wires from scratch, you don't need
to do this.
The boots will slide off of the wire if you do it carefully. Straighten
out the metal connector as much as possible, and twist the boot around the wire
a little to break it loose. Then just pull it off.
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Prepare New Coil Connector
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MSD provides a crimping tool to use when assembling their wires, and
I found that by using a needle-nose pliers to slightly bend the end tabs
before crimping, I could get a better connection. The slightly bent
connector is on the left in the left picture.
If you chose to reuse your existing wires and just buy the GM coil
connectors, you'll still need to crimp them onto the wires and install
the boot like shown below.
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Align Connector in Tool and Crimp
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Following the directions in the MSD wire instructions, align the
wire and connector in the crimping tool. Place the tool in a vise
and then tighten the vise to crimp the connector.
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Install Boot On Wire
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After squirting some dielectric grease into the boot (to ease installation
and to help prevent shorts), slide the connector into the boot.
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Install Wires
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Repeat the creation of the plug wire described in the previous steps
for each of the other 5 wires. Then connect the wires onto
the plugs and the coils. Make sure you
route the wires such that they're properly spaced and not
pinched anywhere.
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Button Everything Back Up
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Don't forget the spark plug cover plate and make sure you
don't have any screws or bolts left over. Also be sure
to close the draincock on your radiator and refill your
coolant.
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