I'm setting up my summer projects for my X and I believe I'll be changing the plugs... As long as I had the coil packs off, I thought I'd replace them with Accel's version. I'm wondering if anyone out there in FTE land has experience with this product:

ACCEL COIL PACKS

I also think MSD has coil packs for our 2 valve V-10s... remember the 05 Excursion does not have a 3 valve head.

Any guidance would be appreciated.

Thanks!!

 

I remember someone saying they had tried them, and they had a very high failure rate. Maybe that was a production issue and has been resolved since them. It was around 3 years ago.

But, overall, they won't do anything. You need more spark for applications like supercharging/turbocharging, any stock motor won't see any benefits.

If you're changing them all just for the heck of it, it might be worth it if you can't get COPs locally at a good price. But I wouldn't expect any improvement.

The best thing you can do is get new boots, make sure everything is perfectly clean, and use dialectric grease at the tips of the boot and around the seal at the top.

Unless you have a bad idle or obvious misfire, I'd say it wouldn't be worth the money. Use the money to get rid of the Y-pipe restriction

 

Where's a good place for boots???

 

I posted this response to Bob's parallel question in the Excursion forum, but it's probably more relevant here anyway:

I don't have the Accel COPs on my Excursion, but on my '92 Town Car I bought the Accel EDIS coil packs for the 4.6. They lasted about 6 months before they started having problems.

One of my friends happened to work on both the EDIS development, and then later on the COP program for Ford. I asked him about this, and he told me that when they did the development, they tested all different kinds of voltages, powers, etc. and found that the higher power coils only served to break faster and cause more problems. No performance or mileage benefit, at least not on a stock engine, but almost an assured increase in failure rates.

I have used other Accel products with success before, but on conventional high-energy distributor ignitions. MSD may be better, but after my experience with the Accel units on my Town Car, I wouldn't waste my money.

If you think your coils may need to get replaced in the near future and want to change them, just buy a set of Motorcraft coils and put them on. I don't know how many miles you have on your truck, though, but I'm guessing it's probably not all that high. They don't seem to start having problems until about 80-90k usually.