Today I was resealing my cam cover for the ....th teen time, And I noticed a couple of little pieces of orange plastic fall out from inside the plug to the coils. Upon further investigation the pieces were part of a plastic "U" shaped part the fit above and below the plug in connector. They don't seem to be really necessary so I plugged every thing back together at the end of the job and the car ran fine with two pieces missing.

Has anyone had this experience and has there been any reported trouble with this part in the plug to the coils falling apart due to age?

Thanks guys in advance.

 

I think they're just there to create a better seal with the coils.
I've started to run the lincoln coils in both cars since I was tired of dealing with the intermittent misfires with the oem coils.
In order to run the different coils, the original harnesses need to be flipped and the orange "clips" inside the harness need to be broken up. I've been running the different coils in my XJ6 for about 30k miles now with the broken orange clips and haven't had any misfire issues other than one coil failing after about 25k.
I think it would be safe to run with the orange clips broken...

 

Thanks for the info. That is about what I thought. And thanks for the info on the Lincoln coils. I have read you thread on that before and it is quite good.

 

those are water resistant and moisture seal, it is necessary to keep them on, if it falls off you can just reseal with silicon sealant

 

I think there are two types of seals in the harness.
There is a rubber rectangular boot type thing that I imagine is for the moisture and water but there are also plastic pieces that tend to break off when they've become brittle. EZDriver mentioned the plastic pieces in his original post but not the rubber seals that sit further back in harness

 

Just an update. The main plastic of the connector is fine. The little orange part inside the connector is brittle and some of that has broken away. Moisture protection is just as good as ever. Thought the orange parts might be for more electrical insulation.

Car is running fine. I can barely feel it running when at idle by putting my hand on the top of the dash.

Thanks guys