Tuesday, September 2nd, 2025
I had ordered new plugs and wires back when I first bought the bug but never got around to putting them in so I decided it was a simple (!) enough job that I would do it before putting the bug to bed for the winter. Yeah, right. I started out with caution and pulled only the #1 plug (right front). Replaced it with a new plug then removed the wire by first tying a length of cord to the end of it and pulling it through the thin space under the alternator then between the intake manifold and the dog house. I then untied the the cord from the old wire and tied it to the plug end of the new wire and used it to pull the new wire through the same space and back to the #1 plug. Then I spent 15 minutes trying to push the wire onto the plug. It's hard to get your hand back there to begin with and you can't see anything so you're doing it blind. Next think I know I hear a crack! Then four letter words come out of my mouth. I pull the wire back out and this is what I see:
The bakelite cover has broken! What the hell! I look under the car to see if the broken part ha dropped through and of course it hasn't. My imagination runs a bit wild and I think where did the damn thing go? Is it laying there waiting to fall into the cylinder the next time I pull the plug out and is it going to interfere with the wire attaching to the plug. I decide to just keep trying to see if it will attach with no luck what so ever. I even tried a second new wire and broke that one too! I then decide to take another of the new plugs and try to attach one of the new wires to it right out in front of my eyes.
Turns out, these wires are meant to clip onto the top the plug WITHOUT the insulator screwed on:
Although, they don't easily clip on. First off, you have to get the connector to go onto the plug top nice an straight and then exert a fair amount of pressure - while you are reaching around the engine in a spot you cannot see. Near impossible. Even after all that, the connection seems tenuous at best. Though I'm sure millions of vehicles have run trillions of miles and worked. I spent the next half hour just trying to get a look around the plug to see where that bit of bakelite has gone and finally get a shot of it down behind the engine tin.
If you blow up the view in the mirror you can see it laying sown inside the round plug access hole.
Now that I know it is not going to fall into the cylinder head when I pull the plug out, I pull it out, take the insulator off of it, put it back in and thread the old wire back through (since the new one is broken) and with great effort get it to connect. Holy crap. Time to call it a night. At least the bug will run now.
Over the next day or so I research the issue of plug wires and insulator/no insulator connectors. This included a call to JBugs. I found that all the more expensive plug wires expect no insulator. The only set that JBugs has that expects insulators only coast about $20. I'm a little concerned about quality but I really believe that clipping onto the insulator will make it much easier to get a good connection. I put in an order to JBugs and await delivery. Meanwhile, I thought to myself, could I get the end of the hop vac down in there and suck out that bit of bakelite
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