Before the white death and cold came, I bought a new MSD high vibration coil for my car. Years of the Blaster 2 coil being mounted horizontally took its toll and I’ve had oil leaking from it the last few years; figured I’d replace it before it fried.

Anyway, on the new coil where the coil to distributor wire connects, the male end on the coil is tapered so; no coil wire seems to want to stay connected well. The taper essentially pushes the wire off. At the same time, I put a set of Firecore wires on the car and the Firecore coil wire won’t stay on the coil at all; I had to use the old MSD wire. The Blaster 2 male end was straight with no taper and I did not experience this issue. As you all know, a long straight male end with adequate girth and no taper that allows for a good connection is what most of us wish for.

I’ve messed with the actual metal connector on both coil wires and just have not been able to get the wire to make a better connection. I’ve thought about turning the male end on a lathe or something like that to get rid of the taper but, the positive and negative wire studs to power the coil are in the way. I’ve also thought about super gluing the boot to the coil and just always disconnecting the coil wire from the distributor if and when I do need to remove it.

I’m not opposed to buying yet another coil without a taper to eliminate the problem but, don’t know which standard looking coil that can be mounted horizontally will fit the bill with my FBO vacuum advance distributor and MSD 6AL box.

Any suggestions?

An MSD guru turned me on to using the F150 ('91 302 I think) epoxy coil, which is the same as MSD sells in red for twice the money. Works way better than my Blaster2 ever did, and doesn't care about vertical/horizontal. It uses a 2-prong plug for the coil wires, which I use & adapt to the existing coil +/- wires.
As for the coil wire itself, I just use a regular modern wire with the female coil end.
Those 3 items run about $40 total at the local AutoZone.
To mount the coil, I usually just fab a bracket out of some 1/2" angle aluminum and a couple fasteners.

The taper helps seal the connection. The wire is held in by the male end metal connection. It needs to be able to Snap in place. If its not snapping into the coil female end the male metal end needs to be opened up a bit until it does Snap in and contain itself.

You might need to pull the wire further through the boot so it can extend further into the coil to its snap in position, then slide the boot tight onto the tapered end of the coil.

I'd keep the same coil & work with the terminal so it fits, I wouldn't turn it & I'd even superglue it if need be.

I was outside fixing a wiring issue on my truck today and had some time after to mess with the coil wire on the Road Runner.

After searching for the wire for 30 minutes, I located it and compared the connector to some MSD connectors I have. I noticed that the Firecore connector on the coil wire was completely smooth whereas the MSD connector has three small nubs on the it where it makes contact with the coil female connection.

I had some new MSD connectors which made positive contact with the female end on the coil but, they were too long. I cut the connector down, cut the original connector off the Firecore wire, crimped on the new one and now I'm good to go.

FYI- I'm not bashing the Firecore wires at all. They are nice wires and I'm very happy with them. When dealing with old cars like this, that could have any number of coils, I'm sure Firecore or any other wire company just can't account for all possible combinations that their customers might be using. I chalk it up to par for the course when hot rodding.

Hello, did we speak on the phone? I think you and I got this working.. The boot needs to be squeezed to purge out the air. Also, with the 8.5mm wire, the terminal is a little thicker than the smaller wires, so they are tighter fitting into the coil cone.. Let me know with a phone call that all is well, please. Thanks, Rick