About a year ago, I bought a set of 8mm plug wires from Accel to upgrade my wiring, trying to avoid as much parasitic loss and heat as I could. The problem, unfortunately, was that the plugs I bought required male rather than female connectors on the distributor cap, so I couldn't use them. Rather than return them, I kept the wires to force me to find a solution at some point. So I've been running this style cap for the life of the Jeep.
Then, through another member of IFJSA (GetLost4x4), I learned about a rather simple upgrade/fix for the male/female connectors on the cap. See, the Duraspark distributor is a Ford product, and GetLost used a larger cap and rotor that would normally go on a '79 Ford F-350 which ran essentially the same distributor. The setup begins with a mounting adapter that allows a 5" diameter cap on a ~3 1/2" diameter distributor.
Then the new cap and plugs can be mounted on there, getting me the male connectors on the cap. Basically, the cap is ultimately the same height as the original, just wider, which helps cut down on potential crossfire situations.
Done. Getting the plugs on the end of the wires (the kit was a do-it-yourself setup to customize the wire length) was easily the hardest task in this project. I strongly recommend a good pair of crimping pliers ($20 for a nice Vice Grip tool with three or so crimping options). This is just one more way of improving the wiring efficiency and reliability in the engine bay. Never a mistake to do that.
