m0par0rn0car
Member
A few weeks ago I was driving my 69 Fury 3 out of state and the wiring harness behind the dash caught on fire or shorted or something and melted the whole thing. Luckily I was able to bypass the ammeter to get it back home but ever since it’s been sitting in my yard. I went through and built a new harness for my last car (83 jeep wagoneer) and that was a royal PIA and I never wanted to do it again so for the last couple weeks I’ve been searching high and low for a NOS harness or a reman but haven’t found any I liked so here I am again, biting the bullet and making a harness.
Like most people on this forum (and car guys in general I think) I hate wiring and try to avoid it as much as possible. No matter what I try I end up doing it sooner or later anyway so I have a little knowledge about automotive wiring and some tools to make it go faster. Now since I dislike it so much I’m trying to make it as easy as possible for myself and thought I’d post my process on here for anyone interested. I know it’s maybe not the best way to do it or the “proper” way but it works for me and might help some other guys out. And yes I know I can buy a painless harness but I tried one for my 78 f-250 and hated it.
Anyways, first step for me was to convert a wiring diagram to a list of locations for the wires. For this step and the whole process an fsm is invaluable and I honestly could not do it without one. To do this part I sat down with the diagram for behind the dash and spent close to 3 hours tracing each wire from one end to the other, listing the location, color and size of the wire. At this point I made a choice that suits myself but might not be what others would want. I chose to go to with a standard 10 colors for the harness rather than each of the 25 or so oem colors (each color, light and dark versions, and ones with a tracer). I did this for a couple reasons, personally after making a harness like this I have a good understanding of it and it’s easy enough to go back later to fix things and also it’s expensive to buy enough wire of each color and being 18 with too many cars I’m trying to spend as little as possible while still doing it right.
After all the locations had been listed I went through the harness itself and separated each connector from the wires by using a pick to bend the tab that holds the spade connector in. This was a little tedious (what isn’t when it comes to wiring) but I managed to salvage all but one connector. After I had all the parts I needed I sat down and started to add wires to the bulkhead connector, that’s as far as I got tonight so I’ll keep some updates coming if anyone’s interested.
Like most people on this forum (and car guys in general I think) I hate wiring and try to avoid it as much as possible. No matter what I try I end up doing it sooner or later anyway so I have a little knowledge about automotive wiring and some tools to make it go faster. Now since I dislike it so much I’m trying to make it as easy as possible for myself and thought I’d post my process on here for anyone interested. I know it’s maybe not the best way to do it or the “proper” way but it works for me and might help some other guys out. And yes I know I can buy a painless harness but I tried one for my 78 f-250 and hated it.
Anyways, first step for me was to convert a wiring diagram to a list of locations for the wires. For this step and the whole process an fsm is invaluable and I honestly could not do it without one. To do this part I sat down with the diagram for behind the dash and spent close to 3 hours tracing each wire from one end to the other, listing the location, color and size of the wire. At this point I made a choice that suits myself but might not be what others would want. I chose to go to with a standard 10 colors for the harness rather than each of the 25 or so oem colors (each color, light and dark versions, and ones with a tracer). I did this for a couple reasons, personally after making a harness like this I have a good understanding of it and it’s easy enough to go back later to fix things and also it’s expensive to buy enough wire of each color and being 18 with too many cars I’m trying to spend as little as possible while still doing it right.
After all the locations had been listed I went through the harness itself and separated each connector from the wires by using a pick to bend the tab that holds the spade connector in. This was a little tedious (what isn’t when it comes to wiring) but I managed to salvage all but one connector. After I had all the parts I needed I sat down and started to add wires to the bulkhead connector, that’s as far as I got tonight so I’ll keep some updates coming if anyone’s interested.
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