Premium vs. standard Ford parts. What to buy?

[Hans]

Dear all,
Noticed Ford parts come in 2 classes. a standard and premium quality.
What do you advise to use for ignition parts?

Thanks,
Hans.

[mudgepondexpress]

Premium. Premium is usually copper contacts, standard is aluminum. Copper lasts a lot longer.

[richpet]

I think the contacts are brass, not copper. Go premium. They last longer and have less resistance.

[Hans]

Thanks, I 'll do that.
Similar question on the spark wire sets from Ford. Also in premium and standard grade. What's the difference there?
Much appreciating the feedback.
Car is getting MOT-ed. Preparing it for the coming season.

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[erratic50]

Buy a nice set of off the shelf plug wires from the mcparts store.

My son has a set of Ford Racing 9mm wires on his 86GT and they are the worst plug wires I’ve ever seen. We were troubleshooting a somewhat random miss on his car and it turns out it was corrosion at the plug wire connector where it goes on to the distributor cap. We’ve tried everything you can think of in terms of compounds like do-electric grease to prevent a re-occurrence and one by one every wire on that car has done the exact same thing. It’s a bit less rapid now that we’ve tossed the MSD cap it had on it when we bought it in favor of premium Motorcraft, but it’s still a problem.

Meanwhile my 86GT has none of these problems and absolutely runs like a top. I have a date coded set of wires on it with around 120K miles on them. The car has nearly 1/2 million miles and I ran a premium set of wires from the mcparts store on it for years. I would bet I have at least 200K miles on the high end plugs I put in it years ago too — maybe more.

The next time I am helping chase a random miss on my son’s car again the Ford Racing wires are going to race their sorry selves right into the dumpster where they belong. That car has been a bit of an antichrist for us in the less than 3 years we’ve owned it. 95% of the issues we’ve had have been the previous owner’s fault. Or the one before that. Or the one before that..... oh well. Part of owning a 33 year old car I guess.

[KevinK]

I have not seen it yet myself, but I hear there are now economy brand Motorcraft parts available now.

In general, Motorcraft may not be the Best Quality but they have been very good quality. Over the last 5 years or so they may have degraded especially if the parts are made in China. I still go with Motorcraft unless I have problem with them but many Foxbody part are no longer available.