Back to the unitized wire set rebuilding.
Received the new wire set for the "octopus" and new spark plug terminal ends for the old wire set.
I got a box of 50 of the spark plug terminal ends and installed eight of them with the correct crimping tool. It's amazing what having the right tool for the right job will do! The angles on these terminals are an exact match to the originals.
The new donor wire set I got was from Lectric Limited. No one makes unitized wire sets, so these are for the regular points style ignition. They are date coded 3rd quarter 1971. I removed the tower boots and terminals from each new wire. I then carefully removed the bowtie terminal ends from each of the remnants of the original cut wires from the "octopus" with a small screw driver to pry the edges up and then a needle nosed pliers to bend the tabs.
Once I got the terminals off, I noticed that not only did the original wires have a section of the inner graphite core stripped and folded over to lie against the terminal base, they also had a one inch section of copper wire stuck into the end of each wire and bent over to also form a contact with the terminal. In addition to that, the terminal has an internal barb that pierces the wire and touches the internal graphite wire. I used the new crimping tool to affix each bowtie terminal to the wires. I also use some White Out to number each wire so I knew which is which.
After getting all the wires matched to length, (the new set has the correct number of long, medium and short wires that match the unitized wires length), I applied a layer of black weatherstrip adhesive to both sides of the octopus and the channels where the wires set. I inserted all the wires and seated the terminals through the octopus. I then installed the octopus on the cap and bolted the coil down on top which created the perfect clamp for the wire set. I also used a bunch of large binder clips and clothes pins to squeeze the outer edges together and will let it sit overnight.
