Hello fellow enthusiasts,
I’m changing plug wires on my 89 Lucas 5.3 12, and looking for quality plug wires in an alternative color other than black. Can anyone advise where and kind to order?
Thank you,
My favorite is Magnecor, which you can get on Amazon for slightly north of $100.
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Thanks John, what color are they?
I installed the red Magnecor wires in my wife’s Signal Red 1990 XJ-S convertible (5.3L V12 w/ Marelli ignition). The attached picture shows how the engine bay looks after my recent work to tidy it up a bit. 
Regards,
Paul M. Novak
1990 Series III V12 Vanden Plas
1990 XJ-S Classic Collection convertible
1987 XJ6 Vanden Plas
1984 XJ6 Vanden Plas
1969 E-Type FHC
1957 MK VIII Saloon
Ramona, CA USA
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Very nice Paul looks beautiful! Your wife’s engine looks like it’s brand new to you refresh the whole engine??
Wow Paul, that engine is spotless. I like that you cleaned and kept the Norma clamps instead of generic clamps.
The Magnecor on my cars are all blue. Looks like blue is 8mm and red is 8.5mm. I can’t imagine there’s any difference for mere mortals.
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This project in my wife’s 1990 XJ-S convertible (5.3L V12 w/ Marelli ignition) started out as a removal and replacement of the radiator because the engine coolant temperatures were higher than I knew were correct. Then I decided that as long as I had the bonnet off, I might as well replace all the hoses, belts, and lots of other stuff. The wiring harnesses were shot, so I replaced a bunch of connectors and then wrapped them all in new vinyl tape. I cleaned up some rust and repainted those areas. I sent the fuel injector rail out for servicing and reinstalled that. I also replace all the little plastic clamps and connector covers that were cracked or discolored with age from new like ones that I harvested from my parts cars. I had the oil cooler and transmission cooler hoses rebuilt and replaced them. I removed the intake manifolds and painted them with high temperature aluminum colored ceramic engine paint before reinstalling them. I removed the cam covers, measured and adjusted the valve clearances (about half of them were out of tolerance) and installed new gaskets. Along the way I removed, tested, replaced or reinstalled lots of the EFI sensors, the thermostats, gaskets, seals, and lots and lots more. Pretty much everything that I put back in was either cleaned, new, repainted, polished or otherwise refurbished. My engine disassembly stopped with the cam covers and I didn’t touch the bottom end at all since the engine ran great, but warm. I tried to keep the engine bay as original as I could, but some things needed to be replaced with aftermarket stuff like the bonnet liner and some of the hoses. I bought a kit and repainted all of the cadmium plated parts. I am not sure how it will hold up over time, but it looks pretty much like the original plating and a lot better than the tarnished, rusty bits they looked like before. The attached 6 pictures show how it looks now. The coolant temperatures are running much cooler, even on the 100 degree F plus days here in my rural east San Diego county location.
I have done work similar to this in my other Jaguars, but this was the most extensive (and expensive?) engine bay restoration that I have completed to date. I have put on about 2, 000 miles since completing this work in April and everything is working great (after I sorted out the problems I had with my recently serviced fuel injectors). Please let me know if you have any questions.
Regards,
Paul M. Novak
1990 Series III V12 Vanden Plas
1990 XJ-S Classic Collection convertible
1987 XJ6 Vanden Plas
1984 XJ6 Vanden Plas
1969 E-Type FHC
1957 MK VIII Saloon
Ramona, CA USA
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Hi Paul,
Where did you get the hood liner from? That really looks good.
Ptipon
Sonora/CA, 90 XJS-V12 conv, United States
So beautiful lovely work!! Where did you send your fuel rail to be serviced?
Hi James, I also like the Magnecor wires set. Mine are blue, and the heavier gauge wires are red IIRC. The wires are a perfect length for each plug, and the angle of the connectors is good for each plug also, but the best part is that each wire has an identifying number so that installing each one is easy, even for me.
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Wow very nice. I will most certainly get a set. What would the benefit be of having the heavier guage red wires over the blue?
I would like to see each plug wire a different color and numbers printed on them. …is there such a thing?
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Seth Emerson (Silicone Wire Systems) is a Corvair guy who makes custom multicolour sets for any car…but only eight different colours.
I don’t believe the wire gauge is an issue. Rather, thicker insulation is more resistant to cross-firing and arcing to ground. The mm designations are outside diameter.
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The original wire set was probably 7mm wire. The blue set is 8mm. The red wires are 10mm and I think could be difficult to cram into the space around the distributor, and in the “vee”. (If you have a red car, however…)My Jag happens to be blue, so it was a no-brainer. I don’t see any benefit in having the thicker (10mm) insulation considering the confined space we have with these engines. On my 1960 Apache truck I DO have 10mm wiring (MSD), but the engine compartment is pretty big around the SBC.Edit: Maybe my memory is failing- the red wires are 8.5 mm, not 10mm.
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John,
I purchased those red “Magnecor KV85 Competition Pure Silicone Ignition Cable” spark plug wires a years ago when I was trouble shooting some ignition related problems in my wife’s 1990 XJ-S convertible (5.3L V12 w/ Marelli ignition). You are right that they are a bit over the top in performance for a passenger vehicle. I was trying to eliminate the possibility of inadequate spark plug wires, but I suppose another factor was the red color that matched my wife’s Signal Red XJ-S convertible. 
When I did my recent engine bay cleanup of this car I just wiped down these wires after I removed them from the car and reinstalled them after inspecting for any problems (and there were none). The silicone wires are very flexible and there is no problem routing them around and inside the V from the distributor to the spark plugs. The red color is not as bright as when I first installed them, but they nicely match that Signal Red engine bay, and they are still working nicely in this very smoothly running engine.
I reused a lot of the original NORMA clamps in the engine bay, but also harvested some almost new looking hose clamps (as well as a lot of other little plastic bits and pieces ) from my XJ6 parts cars so most everything that I put back looked new or almost new. I also added a bunch more CORBIN clamps in the engine bay on the vacuum hoses that go pretty much everywhere. When I replaced all the vacuum hoses (and I mean all of them) in the engine bay, many were hard and clearly not holding a complete vacuum as the ends were hard and loosely held onto their nipples. Jagura had installed CORBIN clamps on some vacuum lines, so I went to the local NAPA store and picked up a variety of sizes and put them on the rest of the vacuum hoses. Since the CORBIN clamps I got were black they are almost invisible, but they are there and making sure the vacuum hose connections were tight. One of the reasons that I added all these CORBIN clamps on the vacuum hoses was because before I did this recent work this engine had that annoying high initial idle that hit the fuel cut off point shortly after starting from cold. So the engine RPMs would cycle up and down for a few minutes until the engine heated up. The engine no longer has that problem. However, it is impossible for me to know what exactly fixed it because I removed and replaced so many things (intake manifold gaskets, fuel injector seals, hoses, clamps, etc) that could have affected that and also readjusted the throttle butterflies and removed and worked on the Auxiliary Air Valve. So there might have been a combination of causes for the RPM cycling on start, but for now the engine starts nicely from cold and no longer has that annoying RPM cycling when starting from cold.
Regards,
Paul M. Novak
1990 Series III V12 Vanden Plas
1990 XJ-S Classic Collection convertible
1987 XJ6 Vanden Plas
1984 XJ6 Vanden Plas
1969 E-Type FHC
1957 MK VIII Saloon
Ramona, CA USA
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I purchased that headliner on eBay in 2014 with the auction title of “Jaguar XJS Hood / Bonnet liner” for $64. At the time, I tried to get a new OEM one from Jaguar but they no longer carried them. I searched around a bit and I knew pretty much what I was looking for because I installed a similar one on my 1984 XJ6 Vanden Plas as shown in the attached picture. They are both blcka neoprene type foam. The XJ6 one is smooth like the old time wet suits and I had to use a spray type high temperature adhesive to the bonnet and liner when I installed it. The XJ-S one has a fabric cover and had adhesive on the back covered by paper and so I just had to peel the paper back and put the liner in place. They both did a nice job of improving the look of the engine bay because the original OEM liners looked like moth eaten bear rugs. I also thought the logos added a little bit of interest to the otherwise drab looking black material.
Regards,
Paul M. Novak
1990 Series III V12 Vanden Plas
1990 XJ-S Classic Collection convertible
1987 XJ6 Vanden Plas
1984 XJ6 Vanden Plas
1969 E-Type FHC
1957 MK VIII Saloon
Ramona, CA USA
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Thank you. This was the result of hundreds of hours of work where I was definitely stretching my capabilities especially while adjusting more than half of the intake and exhaust valves as well as rebuilding many of the engine bay electrical harnesses soldering in new connectors with concerns about polarity issues of some of the wires/connectors. I learned a lot about the sensors/wiring/functions of the Marelli Ignition and Lucas EFI system as I tried to sort out my no start problems after the work.
I sent the fuel injector rail to be serviced by SD Faircloth at Jaguar Fuel Injection Services in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.
Regards,
Paul M. Novak
1990 Series III V12 Vanden Plas
1990 XJ-S Classic Collection convertible
1987 XJ6 Vanden Plas
1984 XJ6 Vanden Plas
1969 E-Type FHC
1957 MK VIII Saloon
Ramona, CA USA
1 Like
Hi Paul, Kudos on the appearance of your engine compartment- and I particularly like the hood insulation. You described the hose clamps as “Norma” and “Corbin”. I’m not familiar with those names, although I did know a girl named Norma when I was a teenager. Are the “Corbin” clamps those spring-loaded jobs that can fly all over the place if your pliers slip? Best, Dave.
Right. You obviously need hose clamp pliers. The simplest ones are ordinary pliers with groove cut in each jaw–work great. Acquiring a pair will change your entire outlook on life!
Just to keep track of them when installing and might look neat