Ferroflex HT Cable - good kit or load of sh!t?

[Laird_Scooby]

Hi All,

after suffering the second total (and sudden) failure of the HT leads during my ownership of my Rover 827 Sterling (Honda V6 powered) yesterday, i'm looking to find some better quality leads.
To put that into perspective, the first set of leads died at the tender age of 18 years so to be fair, they had a good innings. For some reason this engine is known to be "harsh" on HT leads although to be honest i can't see why. That aside, the second set of leads (fitted 2 years ago) were a pattern set and came to me second hand after (allegedly) less than a years use.
So that gives a 3 year life-span for a set of pattern leads - not good. The cost of the genuine Honda leads is prohibitively high (about £200 ) so i've decided to make my own.

As such i've been trying to find some good quality 8mm HT cable and something that keeps cropping up is Ferroflex cable. Does anyone have any experience of this cable, either from using it to make custom leads or from buying a ready made set of leads?

Any input gratefully received, good, bad or indifferent!

[Penguin45]

Bougicord if you want indestructible.

P45.

[Laird_Scooby]

Hmm, had a look at the Bougicord website (or tried to!) and not over impressed but thanks anyway.

The hunt continues..........

[TerryG]

Can you buy the bits to make your own? I just buy a reel of 7mm silicon HT lead from ebay and crimp the ends on.
I treat them as a service item to replace annually although that is probably excessive.

[Laird_Scooby]

That's the plan Terry - some bits aren't available but i can re-use those bits from the original leads as they aren't so critical. I'm looking to make them out of 8mm HT cable as per the OE spec, preferably in blue (as i like blue) or red as the originals are red.
The pattern leads i had were 7mm black ones and besides looking "wrong" in the engine bay, they obviously didn't perform long term. Hence my search and the question about Ferroflex.

[TerryG]

Fairy nuff. I use 7mm as it is what I had at the time and they work OK. LPG, 4.6v8, etc. Mine probably matter less as it is not as much of a "high performance" engine and has a traditional distributor rather than coil pack(s).
Oh, and they are blue.
There are red ones on ebay at rather less than £200
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Honda-Legend- ... 1384893765
The ends look a bit more complicated than my "old school" ones. They look even stranger than the extra deep ones on my focus.

[Laird_Scooby]

Thanks for that Terry - the same seller lists the same set for the Rover 825/827 Honda V6 (not to be confused with the later Rover engined KV6 825) for the same price. They may be slightly better than the OE Honda leads as they are 10mm rather than 8mm and the "blurb" implies they are good leads.

The ends aren't actually that complicated - it's just a slide-on rubber boot over the normal spark plug end and the usual coil and distributor ends. The rubber boots are removable, even the coil tower one which oddly neither set has. The coil tower rubber boot is only special in that it's a "double skin" jobby to give twice the amount of penetration protection from wet stuff.
Like i said earlier, i can re-use the "unavailable" bits which basically are the plug-end rubber boots and the coil tower boot. The other bits are the crimp on connectors which seem to be standard and thankfully it's not a DIS system on mine. A friend gave me a mixed collection of red 8mm HT leads that originally came from a V8 Rover so i'll check they're long enough to make up a "get me going" set of leads while i hunt for some new cable. I "borrowed" the HT leads off my 827 coupe yesterday to get me to the BL/BMC Rally at Peterborough but obviously need to refit them sooner rather than later!

As for yours on LPG, i was under the impression (and from my experience running methane powered engines) that LPG and Methane tend to be a bit more "fussy" about the HT side of things - it only had to be a little bit out on the methane engines and the things would shut down! Not good at 2am when i was on call! Drive 50 miles to change a plug then waste an hours sleeping time while it runs happily for an hour before driving another 50 miles home. Then they wanted me at work at 8am!