well dangit!! they're completely out of red ones... all they have is blue & they ain't got a clue when they'll get more
i guess i could get the blue ones, put them on the vette (since i wanna paint it blue & gray anyway), and put the vette wires on the truck

but that's a lot of work & risk of breaking wires

 

How is the resistance on these compared to the MSD wires? Would I be losing performance if I switched?

 

I haven't checked them with an ohm meter, and I'm sure that they have more resistance than the MSD's, but you wouldn't notice any difference in performance. The LS coils are excellent, especially the round coils that these wires will work with.

 

I went down to the garage and checked the resistance of the GTO wires and got between .800-.825 k-ohms across the board...the lowest was about .797. From what I remember, my MSD's are considerably less. I'd pull one off and check it now but it's cold and dark outside and I'm babysitting my daughter tonight. I'll see if I can get a chance later to pop a wire or two off and check them out...

 

OK, here's an update...first off, I checked my MSD wires with an ohm meter and they are considerably less than the Delco GTO's...the MSD's ohmed out between 36-38 ohms except for one or two which were probably just worn out, I've had the wires on the truck for a long time.

Anyway, I got some round coils on ebay and slapped them on...direct bolt on and the GTO wires now fit perfectly. The #3 wire is a little close to the #1 header primary for my liking, but I'm going to keep an eye on it and see how it does over time. And yes, my factory square coils will be in the classifieds shortly, along with my original factory wires that have very low mileage on them

On to the pics of course

Original square coils with red MSD wires:





Round coils with blue GTO 90* wires:







Side by side comparo of square coils vs. round coils



I'm sure that someone's going to ask, so I'll just let you know now that the truck runs exactly the same...only looks cooler with the blue wires

 

Interesting find. I thought most knew about these! I remember back with my 02, I could find cheap OEM wires for $25 shipped on ebay, so I had been running the 90* wires for a long time. I just bought my 05 and was going to do a tune up with the 90* wires but realized I had the square coils. I always wanted the blue wires but could never find them. I got stuck with red.

 

Any idea what years/models got the round coils vs. the square ones? I'm curious about this...

From a little googling it appears that Mitsubishi (Melco) makes the square coils and Delphi (GM spinoff) makes the round coils, and the round coils with the heat sinks are more desirable....

 

I think it depends on who grabbed what out of the stock pile at gm. I have seen the same year 6.0's come with 2 diff sets of coils.. Hell I have seen the heat sinked coils on older trucks, like 2002 4.8 5.3 models also.. So who the hell knows. Just like some of the trucks came with a 799 head and a 243(iirc)

 

Just got a set for my truck, gonna get them in with my headers, hopefully this weekend (weather pending)

 

Yep, my 02 had the round coils from the factory. My 05 has the ugly square coils. My buddy's 06 has the square coils. My brother's 03 has the round coils. Another buddy's 02 has the square coils. I don't think there is any rhyme/reason other than it was what GM had in stock at the time. From what I understand, there were three different manufacturers so the possibility of having multiple style coils is very possible.