Are these coils any good?

D

davidanthony21

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Well I bought my 2001 LS about 2 months ago. It recently started to have a misfire; so i called the car lot I bought it from and persuaded for them to at least pay for parts (2 coils and gasket set). They bought the parts from autozone.

The coils are "Wells" Brand- I guess my concern is whether I should take them back. If they are no good then I will take them back and let the stealership put in their own parts. ($812 parts & labor for:coil, VC gaskets, & tune up) Otherwise I will let an outside mechanic handle the task.

Concerning the gaskets- I have heard that you need the VC gaskets AND Seals. The guy at autozone said this was the complete set. Part #'s are

3w4z-6584-aa/ba

I don't see seals, but I am a dummy when it comes to cars.
 
davidanthony21 said:
The coils are "Wells" Brand- I guess my concern is whether I should take them back. If they are no good then I will take them back and let the stealership put in their own parts. ($812 parts & labor for:coil, VC gaskets, & tune up) Otherwise I will let an outside mechanic handle the task.
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The stealership charged me 2 grand, so you're getting a great quote - you should get it in writing first, the stealership will also guarantee the work for 12 months or 12k miles, try getting an outside mechanic to do that at a lower cost.
As far as brand names for coils, I have no idea, but a coil is a coil - just keep 'em dry.
 
davidanthony21 said:
Well I bought my 2001 LS about 2 months ago. It recently started to have a misfire; so i called the car lot I bought it from and persuaded for them to at least pay for parts (2 coils and gasket set). They bought the parts from autozone.

The coils are "Wells" Brand- I guess my concern is whether I should take them back. If they are no good then I will take them back and let the stealership put in their own parts. ($812 parts & labor for:coil, VC gaskets, & tune up) Otherwise I will let an outside mechanic handle the task.

Concerning the gaskets- I have heard that you need the VC gaskets AND Seals. The guy at autozone said this was the complete set. Part #'s are

3w4z-6584-aa/ba

I don't see seals, but I am a dummy when it comes to cars.
Click to expand...

well if you are goin to have the dealer do the work I would highly recommend that you stick with the OEM parts. Call or email Maxx at 5 star, info in my signature, and ask him for a quote on the parts.

If yu are going to do the work yourself I would recommend that you use the OEM parts. I did buy and install 3 of the Wells coils o 00 LSV6 and two went bad and I had to replace them.

The seals are orings that will fit around the plug wells the gasket will fit between the other edges of the VCs.
 
Midas78 said:
As far as brand names for coils, I have no idea, but a coil is a coil - just keep 'em dry.
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As a former factory rep for an ignition company, I can tell you nothing is further from the truth. Wells is a very bargain basement ignition company that caters to stores like Autozone, Pep Boys, Checker, etc. so they can be competitively priced. I wouldn't use one of their products on ANYTHING!!

If you MUST go aftermarket, use Standard Motor Products (which owns Borg Warner Ignition). You may very well get a Motorcraft coil from them as they source some of their less popular part numbers. Standard should be the supplier for Carquest and many others. Just insist on their premium brand stuff so you don't get another Wells type product. But for me, I wouldn't even consider anything else for a coil than Motorcraft. Why not get what the engineers designed instead of some compromise? If you shop around, you can get them for a decent price too.
 
2001LS8Sport said:
As a former factory rep for an ignition company, I can tell you nothing is further from the truth. Wells is a very bargain basement ignition company that caters to stores like Autozone, Pep Boys, Checker, etc. so they can be competitively priced. I wouldn't use one of their products on ANYTHING!!
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Thanks for the info! :Beer
 
2001LS8Sport said:
As a former factory rep for an ignition company, I can tell you nothing is further from the truth. Wells is a very bargain basement ignition company that caters to stores like Autozone, Pep Boys, Checker, etc. so they can be competitively priced. I wouldn't use one of their products on ANYTHING!!

If you MUST go aftermarket, use Standard Motor Products (which owns Borg Warner Ignition). You may very well get a Motorcraft coil from them as they source some of their less popular part numbers. Standard should be the supplier for Carquest and many others. Just insist on their premium brand stuff so you don't get another Wells type product. But for me, I wouldn't even consider anything else for a coil than Motorcraft. Why not get what the engineers designed instead of some compromise? If you shop around, you can get them for a decent price too.
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One reason I'd shy away from the OEM crap is because it FAILED. As bad as the reputation these OEM coils have for going bad in such a short service life is inexcusable IMO. I've owned numerous cars over the years and have NEVER had an ignition coil go bad, and some of those cars had over 150K miles. Now my LS w/ less than 40K mi has coils going bad, and it seems that it is a ticking timebomb that happens to EVERY LS. The fact that each car now has 8 coils increasese the liklihood of a bad coil x8. And these wimpy coils do 1/8 of the job that single-coil ignition systems do. WTF??

Why should I replace my coils w/ the same crappy OEM stuff that failed in the first place just to take a chance and have them go again in god knows how many miles?? If these were $5 parts I wouldn't give a hoot, but they are at least $37 ea and you need 8 for a complete set! This must be another of Ford's "better ideas", eh?
 
The problems RARELY have anything to do with the coils themselves. It's usually because a seal has failed and contaminated the plug well. Tough to blame a coil for that....
 
2001LS8Sport said:
The problems RARELY have anything to do with the coils themselves. It's usually because a seal has failed and contaminated the plug well. Tough to blame a coil for that....
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So then WHY is everyone replacing their coils? Are you saying that ALL of the misfiring is caused by bad plugs / oil in the plug wells / moisture around the coils?? Even the dealerships are replacing COPs at an abnormal pace. Did THEY mis-diagnose the problems too??

FYI, I've replaced my VC gaskets and spark plugs over a year ago. Only about 6,000 miles have transpired since then. My plugs are dry and clean, so are the COPs. Do YOU think my COPs are still good?
 
JohnnyBz00LS said:
So then WHY is everyone replacing their coils? Are you saying that ALL of the misfiring is caused by bad plugs / oil in the plug wells / moisture around the coils?? Even the dealerships are replacing COPs at an abnormal pace. Did THEY mis-diagnose the problems too??

FYI, I've replaced my VC gaskets and spark plugs over a year ago. Only about 6,000 miles have transpired since then. My plugs are dry and clean, so are the COPs. Do YOU think my COPs are still good?
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What I'm saying is once the plug wells are contaminated with water or oil, it can cause the coil to fail. That is not the coils fault. I am willing to bet that the majority of the coil failures are from oil and water...not the coil itself.

My son had a coil replaced by the dealer for failure due to oil contamination. I replaced the valve cover gaskets and seals. While I was at it, I went ahead and put the old coil back in...just to see. Sure enough...it has worked fine for thousands of miles. I'm not so sure that a lot of these coils are actually bad. They are just shorting out due to contamination.
 
I see what you are saying. There's a TSB that was released in '03 about troubleshooting misfires and it states that approximately 50% of the coils replaced didn't really have a problem. Assuming the other 50% were truly "bad" as a result of oil contamination, it still begs the question, WHY?

I've seen old cars (pre HEI days) w/ points-triggered ignitions w/ the coils caked in grease running just fine for years. And those old coils aren't really designed to be "submersed" in oil / grease or be mounted in an area prone to high levels of oil / grease. The COPs in our V8s were designed to be mounted burried in the valve covers w/ only a rubber seal between a constant oil bath and themselves. One would think that the design of the COP would be robust enough to withstand a leaky seal. The design of the COP (and that whole valve-cover sealing / plug well / COP mounting / etc. in general) to not be fault tolerant in this application is frankly, poor engineering. I don't know if any of the aftermarket COPs are really any better than the OEM Motorcrafts, but IMO it can't hurt to try.

What I might try (before spending $$ on new COPs) is to remove the old COPs, inspect them for any cracks in the seals or arc-paths, clean them up and attempt to re-seal them w/ silicone grease and re-install them. I suspect that if "oil contamination" is the root-cause of the failure, then what is most likely happening is the spark is finding a path of least resistance somewhere OTHER than to the spark plug. I can't see how "oil contamination" could cause the other form of mis-fire (the spark not getting anywhere, or an open in the conductive path to the plug). Unless the potting around the actual physical coil is cracked and allowing oil into the coil assembly, it seems like these should be able to be cleaned up and restore some life in them.
 
I am still waiting for the various hot rodding outfits like ACCEL and MSD to come out with improved design coils like they have for other applications. Last year, MSD indicated that they were looking into the possibility, but needed a bigger market. Now that other engines use the same type of COP, perhaps they will restart their investigation.
 
Johnny...one huge thing you are forgetting when comparing these coils to the old points style....the output. Todays coils put out up to 4 times the voltage the old points style coils did. And where I'm a product of the 60's and all their cars, I can definitively tell you that tons of those coils failed.
 
ok well my engine light just came on - i took it to advanced auto and they said cylinder 4 and 7 are misfiring.

i have the highest ford warranty on the car however if i take it in and its just spark plugs i have to pay for the diag at $75/hr.. is this a standard for the warranty or just this particular dealership?

my car has 91k miles.. i bought it at 75k from the dealership.

they told me if i bring it in adn its jsut plugs.. i pay 75/hr diag.. plus 285 for tune up which consists of simply the plugs..lol

should i risk it and assume its coils or VC leaking and just drop it off?.. btw i was running the piss out of it at the time the engine light came on.. id say about 95mph..lol

thanks for any advice in advance,

matt enderle
 
Parts America has a Visteon OEM replacement for like $30 each. Visteon basically IS Ford (kinda like Delphi basically is GM), correct?
 
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