I worked on my 51 Plymouth today. Put a new starter on and solenoid and hooked it all up. Found out there is a little bit, OK a lot, of funky homemade wiring. I am thinking now would be a good time to get rid of all of the previous owner's custom work and start my own. Do you think it would be better to buy a harness and kit, try to redo what is there one wire at a time, or make my own custom harness? Thanks. John
I don't know how well your wiring skills are. Best safe bet is to rewire the whole car if you are unsure of the wiring. There are many wiring kits available original style or modern depending on your budget.
If you just take your time and read the instructions, a kit is really a good way to go. You might have some revising to do because most kits are setup for modern stuff like alternators, and if you are running a generator you would need to modify the schematic slightly. But nothing that can't be overcome. Someone may even make a wiring kit for generator cars, I have just never looked for one. Don
Rewire the whole thing, you don't want to burn it up with old wiring. Especially if somebody has screwed around with it, who knows what they did! Plydo might have something, although wiring is not listed on their website yet. http://plydo.webs.com/
While you can just rewire it one wire at a time, by the time you get all the wire and accessories associated with the wiring and running back and forth to different stores to get stuff you forgot about, you could have already easily put in a "kit" from one of the suppliers. For less than 150 bucks you can get all new stuff,pre wired into a new fuse block ready to go. I would go this route.. oh yeah, I did go this route when faced with the same situation.
I have done a few wiring jobs from donor cars, going to the store and buying wires that would fit in where the donor car wires wouldn't, etc. They all work and are do able but it is really hard to comb out the bundles. The donor car wires are kinky and twisted and usually not the right length, and if you go buy rolls of new wire, you must figure out what gauge to use on each circuit. I will buy a already figured out wire harness the next time as the money saved isn't worth all the time ironing out home made bundles. But don't expect these wire harness's that you buy will be free of problems. I have a friend who gets frustrated when new harness have some problems with open wires. I was an aircraft electrician all my life so I have done a few engine and aircraft wiring harness's so this is my two cents. Good luck
Advice some gave me, to save buying loads of rolls of wire: use white wire and colour the ends with a Sharpie.
...............Sorry, but on so many levels, I don't think this is a good idea. I hope you were just joking.
most wiring harness kits are labeled every few inches ,so it is easy to trace a circuit. don't buy a harness with all the same color wire even if it is marked, tougher to trace in the event of a problem. i've used ezwire and painless
I'm about 3/4 the way through wiring my roadster using the Sacramento vintage ford kit. This kit essentially provides you with all the wire and materials to create your own loom tailored to your car. When I first looked into the kit, it seems a little daunting, but the nice part is that it's broken down into individual circuit groups such as charging, horn, turn signals etc. so you can focus on one section at a time. I know nothing about wiring and was pretty intimidated but it has turned out great so far. The sac vintage kit is not the cheapest but the quality of the materials have been excellent. Posted from the TJJ App for iPhone & iPad
Do yourself a huge favor and get a Rebel wiring kit. Tugmaster sells them and gives discounts for hambers.
The problem with rewiring it one wire at a time is, unless you have a bunch of experience, or a wiring diagram you don't have much to go off of. Sure you can try to figure things out by looking at the old harness, but depending how boogered up the existing harness is, you could be setting yourself up for a cleaner looking mistake. If you have experience rewiring this its not such a big deal, and could be less expensive than most kits, but you have to be able to recognize other peoples mistakes. Making your own harness is cool, but again you have to put in lots of labor, have a good working knowledge of the system and components. Also depending on the materials, this route could be more expensive than some wiring kits. I work for a shop specializing in old cars of all makes and models. Our bread and butter is safety upgrades for the enthusiast who uses his car. As you can imagine we rewire a lot of cars. Usually we just throw a harness kit at it unless it is a restoration. Literally we have a 330GTC sitting next to a model A roadster, and it cracks me up to see "Old world craftsmanship" that resembles messy coils of spaghetti next to American wiring from the 1930s which resembles one of Edison's experiments. They were both effective in their time, but after that many years of service you have to carefully inspect each harness and decide how much you trust them. If the wiring is dangerous and the job is more of the custom variety I usually dig through the American Autowire catalog until I find what works. I find their kits are very high quality, and after installing over a dozen of them I am still impressed, having never run into a problem. Good luck on your project, if you run into any questions please feel free to pm me. -Sean Ketchem www.pmautos.com
buy one of the cheap universal kits....way cheaper than buying spools of wire and you get a modern fuse block.
i bought one for my f-1 and even though i ordered a basic kit, way to much junk added to it. i bought modern fuse blocks, drew out my diagram, bought wire in correct gauge, and colors. did it myself and have had no problems. also as a theft deterent, add a kill switch somewhere in the system to shut it down. my insurance co. actually added a little more discount after seeing it.
X2 Getting ready to wire my "A" coupe. Did the numbers and kits are cheaper than buying all the wire spools with all the color and wire gage you will need for the job.
When you do it have a buddy come over to help pull wire, and do it all in one day. It's much easier to keep track of everything that way. This is one project where you wanna be the boss, collaboration can get in the way of this particular project. It takes a fair amount of con- centration so save the beers for after you've finished...
Also, I've done it both ways, with kits and making my own. The kit is definitely easier and will save you a few trips to the store, but will cost a bit more. We rewired my Buddies 38 plymouth and he wanted the wires to match (in color) the original wiring diagram. That was great in theory but what a nightmare tracking down all the colors, especially when you get into say, black wire with a green stripe. We got it done but it was colosal waste of time.
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