I can’t get past the look of the distributor, coil and plug leads on an 8ba, which (IMO) doesn’t look as nice and symmetrical as the earlier motors. I would be really interested to see what you have done to your 8ba to tidy up the HT lead arrangement, as I will be rebuilding my first flathead very soon. I am struggling for inspiration on this one! This appears to be the standard sort of layout.... Cheers Mark
It is extremely important to keep the wires separated as V8 Bob has done. Capacitive discharge/leaking between wires can turn a well built engine into a pig.
Metal wire looms are the worst possible thing you could use. They can cut the spark plug current by 4 milliamps.
Here's an 8BA. Spark plug looms are modified originals. Wires are 8MM. Aluminum coil bracket that bolts to water pump bolt is home made. Same bracket can be made using steel. It's great because the coil no longer has to be bolted to the head. It gives a cleaner look to engine.
If nothing else, use black leads. They are harder to see Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
A few examples I found. To my eye plug wires exiting straight out of the cap seem to be easier to rout and look better. I agree with belair about using black wires which seem to be less conspicuous.
One more. Here the builder appears to have run the driver side wires in front of the motor, pretty neat idea!
Pardon the glare but I used the chrome looms as well and re-made the braces that allowed me to attach them using the blower bolts so they appear to hover over the heads. I used 7.5mm cloth covered, carbon suppressor core wires for the MSD system.
People spend thousands of dollars to make an engine go fast and then bolt stuff on the outside that takes hp away..... (wire looms and cloth covered wire)
I ran an 8ba engine with 59ab plug wire looms, I cut the 90* bend off a steel legged chair from work, welded it to the shortened left loom... it crossed over the intake and to about 3" from the cap.... beware as [4] thicker plug wires won't fit inside the looms/90*... I think I used 7 mil or smaller... canvas covered stockers may fit fine... my couple cents.
What I did is take the earlier wire looms, cut off the angle that went originally down to the dizzy on the pre 49 flatheads. Welded the flute back on to the end. Blake 27 showed a pic of my motor. Here's a couple of better shots.
Mine is stock as stock can be, I won't change a thing for the look. I do need to clean up the plug wires...
Please explain. You know that modern cloth covered wire is just regular insulated wire with the cloth sheath added, yes?
The issue is more of inductance causing cross-firing if the plug wires are run side by side in a bundle for any significant length. It looks good to have them all lined up straight, but if you are getting an occasional miss or backfire that you can't figure out, and you have your plug wires neatly bundled, try separating them as a troubleshooting method. They should cross over each other a couple of times, especially if you've got a real hot-assed ignition system. Inductance is the electrical magic that makes transformers (coils) work. One of the neatest things I've seen where inductance was used was a neon lighting installation done by a friend of mine. He lived on a farm in western Minnesota, and their land had a 345,000 volt power line traversing it. Just outside of the power company right of way he ran a half-mile of "electric fence", but instead of keeping the cows where they were supposed to be, he used the inducted voltage in the fence to light a few neon tubes in his shop.
I agree with the above statements. Auto manufactures turned to separating wires. Having damaged or old leaking wires exasperates the problem. However, my 8ba with the early wire looms runs without misses.
It also helps to separate the wires on the two cylinders on a V-8 which fire in sequence (e.g. 1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2) to reduce "inductance firing". In this example separate 5 and 7.
I used Speedway chrome wire looms and ran the wiring to the left bank under the generator, still had a big bundle of wires at the distributor. The coil is mounted to the generator bracket right under the generator. .
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