plug wires - 99 C70 2.3
 

I pulled the plugs on my C70 last night - and I believe they were still original. I was surprised by the construction of the plug wires. I am used to traditional plug wires as found on NA cars, but I've never encountered the "wire harness" type wire I found on the 2.3. So I have two questions:

1) the black wire protector that wraps around the wires, crumbled. It literally fell into hundreds of pieces, and what didn't fall apart, is very brittle. I vacuumed up the pieces before pulling the plugs, to avoid pieces falling into the heads. Now that most of it is gone, the bare wire will contact the head directly. Is this going to cause a problem? Will the wires withstand the heat?

2) when I search for replacement wires I seem to find images of standard type plug wires... can someone point me to a proper replacement harness - or do I need to bother? Do they wear out like a traditional plug wire?

Thanks.

Those are not plug wires. You don't have plug wires. 99 and later used coil on plug as opposed to a distributor system. You can buy wire looming at an auto parts store to replace the crumbled looming if you'd like.

Thanks. And thanks for taking it easy on me. As the wire looms don't seem to have much insulating ability, is it safe to assume that the wires will withstand the heat even if touching the head?

I was hesitant to call them plug wires - but I was finding "wire" sets available for this car... which then had me confused. Thanks for the guidance.

I assume the coils can be left alone until they fail?

As long as you don't pinch the wires under the plastic cover, they'll be fine.

You can leave the coils until one fails.