[66Sprint200]

Ok, I got a new (original) headlamp harness for my car. Well, it didn't come with a radio suppression cylinder. My old one is still attached to mine, but the idiot who owned my car before me spliced all the harnesses in the engine bay together, including the connection between the alternator regulator harness and the suppression cylinder. Well, I can't find one anywhere. Would it be ok if I just cleaned and painted my old one and then crimped on a new plug? Honestly, I don't think I need one because I think my Custom Autosound radio has one built in to it.

[jdstefan22]

I just did the same thing with my headlamp harness, it looks like my radio supression cylinder is the original one also.

I would def try to just crimp on a bullet plug onto the end, attach it where it belongs-to the volt regulator screw down and see how your radio is after that.

Worth a try, won't cost you anything- btw, my original one works just fine.

[Jay H 237]

Yes, just clean your old one and paint it, as you found out they are no longer available and aren't being reproduced.

Here's a pic of mine, http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z...regulator2.jpg I just sprayed it with a coat of silver paint so it looks close to original. The one on my car is one off Ebay as the one that was on my car the wire broke off right where it enters the cylinder.

I have a few spare ones I bought off Ebay to hang onto too. They go for good money, I paid between $40-70 for them! I think they are doing better than my 401k! Hello?.....repro parts suppliers?.....here's something you may want to look into reproducing.


(the voltage regulator in the pic is the solid state electronic Motorcraft replacement. I painted the cover with leftover Plasti-coat Ford Blue 224 that I had used on the engine. The original mechanical ones had a larger darker blue cover with a yellow "Autolite" sticker on them. I heard of problems with the repro Autolites so I went with the Motorcraft on my non-concourse car, I just painted the cover since it looks better than a bright, shiny silver regulator that jumped out at you. I actually went recently and bought a complete repro Autolite and have plans to try to drill out the rivets on the cover and swap the Autolite cover onto the Motorcraft one to further hide it.)

[Ivy66GT]

In their day the cylinders were called 'condensers' but the accurate engineering term is a capacitor. As already mentioned they are NLA and also likely not really needed. Their purpose was to reduce static in mostly AM radio reception since few had heard of FM back then. However, my cars have original Ford AM radios whose noise is unaffected by whether or not the capacitor is plugged in. Who listens to AM radio these days anyhow?

Their main purpose is making it possible to attach the repro red paper tag that says "Use of this terminal for other than radio suppression will cause elect. system failure". I have doubts about how truthful that warning really is - BUT IT WAS ORIGINAL.

They are shaped a little differently but electrically the suppressors are identical to an ignition capacitor. They are twice the capacitance and, generally, twice the size being a similar diameter but twice as long. Almost any ignition condenser/capacitor is 0.25 microfarads; the differences among them are mostly how they are mounted. My Ford suppression capacitor measures 0.55 microfards. A true suppression capacitor being a beefed up ignition capacitor is rated at about 300V although for radio suppression it only needs to be about a 20V capacitor. Any 20V capcitor, or for that matter any empty cylinder of the correct size will do the job for you. You just need to splice a Ford bullet connector on the end of the wire.

The attached photos show the details of an original and a creation of mine from a 40 year old suppression capacitor that came with a generic radio installation kit from the late 60s. The suppressor was so important that I fortunately never got around to installing it on my '59 Rambler. I can now hang that red tag on my GT convertible!

BTW, it should go below the regulator on a '66 so its almost hidden - only the red tag really shows so you can usually get away with any silvery cylinder.

[66Sprint200]

I was just wondering if I really needed it. I checked and there are 3 wires on my custom autosound radio, a black ground, a red power, and an orange battery lead. They all go through a black box with a fuse in it. It says radio suppression unit or something like that on it. I'll probably clean it up and put it back on just for appearance sack.