Technical Traditional looking wire organizing?

Use of Period objects don't necessarily make a "traditional hot rod"


The "original try-rap"

 

Thanks for the info guys. I noticed this on a killer RPU at a show this year and was blown away at how clean it makes the wiring without have to use plastic zip ties.
I was trying to find some info on it after that with no luck. Now I am good to go with mjne


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Back in the day, I don't think there was any concerns about keeping wiring traditional or even good looking at least not by me. All I was concerned about was function not looks. Attached is a picture of our 36 Ford drag car we built as teenagers in the early to mid sixties and you'll understand what I mean as we didn't care about looks. All we were concerned about was did it start and run.
When I joined the USAF as an aircraft mechanic I became familiar with the use of waxed cord but never used it on old hot rods.
Gary

 

too bad we can't bring ourselves to build cars the old way! We really hacked stuff up...

 

Jim, thats because we were young and didn't know any better but it sure was fun. We learned by trial and error.

Gary

 

Tig welding isn't traditional either. It used to be gas or arc welding. But I'm not going to arc weld my hot rod together. We can endeavor to somehow combine old school products and methods with a higher level of craftsmanship and technology than what was the norm for a 22 year old guy in 1960. Hopefully it will look right in the end.

 

Hmmmm. Heliarc (tm) has been around for some time - early 40's? Not sure when it morphed into TIG though in common parlance. Sure it probably wasn't 'traditional' for the backyard guy but for the few, probably working in aerospace and the likes, I'd guess it could well have been in use. Not sure whether that might make it traditional; technically, potentially traditional, maybe?

 

Happy, yes I agree, it was around. But it was not something that the average hot rodder had access to. All my chassis and roll cage work is Tig. The welds look a lot neater than what you would have seen on 99% of any rod built in 1960. Not that there weren't some top notch craftsmen back then. But access to the tools we have now was very limited back then. Arc welds aren't going to look as good. My dad built a car in 1970, I was there helping when I was a kid. All hand tools except for a handheld electric drill, a 7" angle grinder, and an oxy acetylene torch. I remember when we went to the junkyard and cut the whole trunk floor out of a 49 Plymouth with a keyhole saw and a hand crank drill...

 

NHRA won't let me stick weld my cage, so I migged it....looks almost crappy enough to have been done in 1966

 

• You'll find plenty of mention of heliarc welding in the little books.

That was long before they sold any welding machines across from the dog food though. I doubt you could walk thru the neighborhood and find a tig machine in every 4th or 5th garage in traditional times. But around here most of the jobs were manufacturing and there was a tig machine in every 3rd factory maintenance department.

 

Thanks for the thread, fellers.
I learned something today. I'm building for a certain feeling and not just a look. I may use some of the details I see posted here if I can.

 

Squirrel, and you still kicked everybodys butt in A gas at drag week! Attaboy!

 

I went to the county Vo-tech school for welding in 1978. If they had Tig, they never showed it to us. We spend hour after hour practicing gas and arc. They had mig, but we learned that in a couple days.

 

I went thru Voc welding in 1982, they had 6 tig machines & showed mild wear, 1976 year of manufacture for most of them. A some had sycrowave, some were just ac/DC power supply with high freq, The instructor also showed us how to set up a scratch start Tig torch with any old arc welder that was laying around. Even asked us to bring in old buzz boxes from home and ran Tig with those just to drive the point home.

 

Let's bring this back to wiring.
Well done wiring and plumbing are two details I admire in a build.

I plan on trying to hone my wiring skills on my current T build, and photos like this really impress and inspire me.




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Neatly ran wiring and plumbing generally use a bit more material too.
Sort of like neatly designed roads make you drive further with heavier traffic because there aren't any short cuts and crosswise paths.

 

Sorry guys theres no such thing as traditional looking wire organizing. Traditional cars were not normally built that way. We were more interested in making our cars go faster then looking pretty for others to look at. Trust me, that organizing stuff was not traditional back in the day. See my previous 3/27/2017 post and picture of our 36 Ford drag car built in the sixties. The wiring around the distributor looks like a rats nest. I never knew there was anything wrong with that. Later on after I joined the USAF was the first time I even knew waxed cord existed.

 

You have every day driver traditional and magazine / little book traditional.
I wasn't there but my dad was. He wouldn't let me get away with much. His idea about it was that hot rods alway have electrical issues and the more one color wiring there is the more problems you'll have, so put it together like you'll have to fix it in the dark on the side of the road. Surprisingly if you put it together like that, you'll probably never have to, weird huh?

 

31vicky, back in the day, I don't even remember different color wiring being that available much less using it. We used what ever wiring we could find. I think most all the wiring on our drag car was black.
Do you really think teenage kids worried about using different color wiring in case of a night roadside repair? Must have been lucky. To this day I've never had to do one.
Not sure where your coming from on traditional vs. magazine traditional as you say you weren't there. I only know what I saw and experienced not like some who only think they know.

 

I can say I used different color wiring. RED and BLACK


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My first complete rewire involved getting a harness from a slightly newer truck, from the junkyard, and making it fit my older truck. I couldn't afford zip ties, at the time. I did have a soldering iron and black plastic electric tape.

 

Looks like a Harry Joyce era Hiwatt guitar amp, very beautiful wiring like that. But that type of wiring can cause issues with audio applications due to inductive coupling, i.e. electric signals traveling via parallel conductors (wires) can cause some cross talk to occur between them, which results in unwanted noise in audio applications. I would assume there could be some similar concerns with sensitive auto applications, but probably not in a traditional build.

 

Haha, black plastic electrical tape is traditional....

 

Well, I like to stay period to my build when I can. To keep certain bundles of wire together on my avatar, my wiring runs through the old cloth tubing and I used leather shoelacing to snug the ends.
You can buy it at most grocery stores ....

 

Just because you were a hack. Doesn't mean everyone was. I love how you old guys that were actually there like to speak for everyone and state it as a fact. Like you've seen every car built and know every car builder...

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A few sizes of this and some friction tape should make a neat and traditional looking job without a huge amount of effort.
http://www.maneywire.com/asphalt-coated-loom-fabric-loom-woven-cotton-p-2000.html#1

 

Yea, the asphalt loom looks right at home. I use that a lot.

 

I use nylon split-loom that resembles the old asphalt-style loom. TOO easy to use and peel back at a later date if need be. Good Luck, Tim

 

Looks like some guys at least tried to be neat about wiring.

 

I can assure you that different color wiring was available,,,, that evidence is still empirically present today.

I'll concede that most teenage kids when left to their own resolve don't think much about things like that, I was taught differently by someone who knew better and happened to be there. I know there have always been hack wiring jobs, back in the day and I know my dad corrected a bunch of them. So thankfully I was taught vicariously by those mistakes of others to avoid them as well as why. I was blessed to have a mentor like him and I know not everyone did. If I had a different father perhaps hackish tendencies would have been passed down.


It's very true that I can't tell you where I was when Kennedy got shot, nor do I know what a brand new 55 Chevy actually smells like. But that doesn't mean I don't know that hacked wiring is a bad idea, and that making it neat as possible with traditional looks and technology is well represented by photographic evidence, intimate second hand knowledge and my own observations as being very traditional. I also know that hack wiring jobs are equally represented as being "traditional" as well as being inferior trancendant of the time period.

Edit:
And I've stumbled on this today.
I see where you're coming from