Tom’s white GTE had a set of Bosch coils installed in the car for the ignition system. These modern coils are good reliable replacements for the original Marelli units, but the blue color really sticks out in the engine compartment. We had the original coil set up, decided to keep the modern components for reliability, but painted them red, and installed the coils with the old brackets.

To the eagle eye, one can spot the Bosch coil because it has a black top instead of the Marelli brown Bakelite. I also cheated on the wiring a little bit by leaving the original solid core wire on the resistors, but didn’t connect them to any of the circuits. To the casual observer, it will look correct, but that’s all we’re trying to impress!

To give you an idea how many details are involved in this little coil area of the Vintage Ferrari there are these details to make it correct: 1. coils are painted red; 2. tops are Bakelite brown with Marelli logo embossed on oil top; 3. soild core copper wire goes between resistor and coil with no rubber boot between those connections; 4. rubber boots on the opposite side of red wire connections; 5. white cad plating on bracket; 6. resistors painted red as well, sometimes a slightly different red, but it’s been debated if this color change is from heat; 7. yellow stamp on resistor stating resistance spec; 8 nuts securing wires to resistor should have a special lock washer and flat washer and all should be white cad plated; 9. hardware securing resistor to bracket should be a white cad slotted cheese head screw.

The devil is in the details, and imagine how much a competent judge needs to know when there are at least 9 details in this coil set up for them to judge.