blade z51

I'm going to change my cap and rotor in my '94 F150 5.0. I bought some parts from Advance Auto Parts but they look like junk compared with the stock parts. I looked at the stock Motorcraft brand parts and they are quite expensive. The distributor cap alone is over $50... I don't want to put junk in my truck, and I rather see all gray parts in it. However, I see that Summit sells the MSD cap & rotor kit for only $29.95....
Like I said, I don't want to put junk in my car but I have seen a lot of people with MSD parts in their hot rods and stuff. I wonder if these parts are good enough because they can save me about half of the cost....

Thanks for your input.

ymeski56

MSD is better than good enough, as long as their brass!

blade z51

Thanks, it's a long story but I ended up getting the Accel (Sp?) brand. I did look at them carefully and both brands had similar construction, brass terminals, etc. The rotors looked just alike. The other brand "X" parts loked more flimsy and had smaller looking, silvery plated terminals. I did not like them at all in comparison with the original Motorcraft parts.
The original Motorcraft rotor still looks better than either the MSD or the Accel . I'll post pictures of the old parts, maybe you can give me your opinion of their condition by the way they look...

blade z51

Here are some pictures of the old cap & rotor. Maybe you can see by the appearance if they were worn or eroded to the point of causing performance or mpg issues...

ymeski56

Motorcraft is a hard act to follow. Brass C & R will fare much better than stock stuff.

dr_bowtie

Agreed....

I put the stock stuff on my truck when I added the MSD box and just at 1 year its toast already....

dirtcrew51m

Standard ignition makes a brass cap, I think it is a d168dx, the setup I use is MSD spiral wires, msd cap\rotor, and ac rapidfire plugs, everything lasts a while, at least the msd\standard brass term caps can be cleaned and used again.

blade z51

It's been a long time since I had a car with a distributor. I used to clean or service everything from plugs to points to cap, rotor, etc. However, I forget now when to determine when the stuff is too far gone to "clean-up". From looking at the pictures of my old stuff in the post above, can you tell me what the condition is of those parts?
Basically is out of curiosity since I've already replaced them, but I'd like to know what that degree of wear means.

Thanks

hackersmovie

Yeah, they're pretty much toast. I wouldn't clean em' up they look like replacement time.