Someone call the C.O.P’s

As I dwelled deeper into making the ole Mazda plant run better I started taking a look at what I didn’t have and what might be nice to have for the future. With the ITB’s and BP5A intake cam she could breathe and after the wonderful initial tuning done by PFTuning the engine was running and fueling perfectly. My next huddle before making any more performance updates was the spark and coil situation. OEM Mazda coils are very good, but prone to failure. The system was never designed to handle racing performance duties and just give me the spark I wanted.

I had been looking for a system to eliminate the plug wires that would give a much better spark, maybe even multiple sparks to smooth the ignition a bit. A COPs (Coil-On-Plug) system is what I needed. Having the coil directly on the plug would increase the reliability and give a much better burn. There were two routes to go with this system. Follow the OEM configuration of “Wasted Spark” or go to a “Sequential” set-up that would be slightly more efficient but require modifications to the harness, which I decided I wanted to avoid for the time being. I placed a call to Fab9 Tuning for advice and then ordered their Plug-N-Play COP kit for my 99 engine.

The kit is very well made. The fact that it was Plug-N-Play was even better and sped up installation big time. I took me about 25 minutes to remove the old coils and wires and switch out the spark plugs. Within another 15 minutes I had the kit plugged in, coils on the plugs, and the ignition module mounted to the firewall.

The best part about adding this kit was the removal of the OEM coils, coil bracket and wires. I now have a lot of room behind the valve cover to reach things and make adjustments.

When the Denso pencil coils are installed they give a satisfying “Click” when they grab onto the plug. The combination of the coils and the harness give a clean, race-craft look to the top of the engine. I bet I even shed a few ounces in the process, weight loss is always good. I gave the engine a quick test fire to make sure everything went well before cleaning up and tidying the wires. The idle was noticeably smoother as predicted and the “burble” a bit more pronounced. Due to rain I would not be able to do a test run unfortunately. Fun time would have to wait.

It’s the little things…..

In addition to the COP’s I have been doing my best to get a lot of the little items off my list so the Catfish can be street driven. Over the past week two of those things finally got done. The first was the horn. I had a MOMO steering wheel installed and had the parts to make it work but had never had the time to trace the wiring and hook it up. This turned out to be a very easy thing to do when I dug into it. In my usually cloudy wisdom I had some how manages to leave the OEM horn circuit on my modified harness 100% intact. Wiring took about 15 minutes. About two weeks before I had contacted Revlimiter.net to make me a custom Catfish logo horn button. Their work is beautiful and gave the interior a really nice factory build look. I am contemplating having then make me a few other items including gauge faces. I also managed to find an old stainless roll bar ring and grommet laying around in an old box of parts. It turned into a very nice shift lever trim after a bit of rework.