Spark plug wires question

[Brett Dikeman]

At 7:19 PM +0100 12/26/03, Phil Payne wrote:
>  > Phil, forgive me my ignorance.  I never saw a plug cap apart from a wire so
>>  for me it is one piece.
>>  Can I take them apart and connect back without special equipment?  Do you
>>  ever take a wire apart to measure resistance of a wire and a plug cap?
>>  Do you ever replace them separately?
>
>I _always_ replace them separately.   You very often find a plug 
>wire set with one substandard
>wire.
>
>For the ur-quattro:
>
>The wire is N 018 385 1 - it's a 50 metre roll.
>
>The plug cap is 036 035 255E and the silly little clip inside it is 
>030 405 423A.  The
>distributor end is 030 405 423A.

This is not an option for crossflow head (20v, V6, etc) owners- for 
those applications, I heartily recommend the magnecore wires, at 
least based on personal experience.

I bought the regular, black, non-sexy, non-race kind.  They were a 
steal, at about half the cost of factory wires(at least for the 3B)- 
and they're still going strong 80,000 miles later(I bought them 
shortly after I bought the car, back in 98 I think).  I clean the 
connectors every once in a while(a little oil gets up in 'em no 
matter what I do), and I last checked their resistance maybe two 
years ago- dead on spec, each wire identical.  I should probably 
check them again, getting around time.

Why anyone would buy OEM wires is way beyond me- you're flushing 
money down the toilet, at 2x the cost and limited life.  If they're 
good enough for the fussy 3B, they'll be good enough for virtually 
any other Audi.

I've only heard of one instance of defect in the magencore wires- 
Brandon Hull got a set for his eS2 which were crimped improperly and 
had some exposed wire which was shorting to the block(and 
electrocuted his mechanic :-)

Brett
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