hey loogy---i do wiring on the side--and i have always bought my stuff from a plce called Del City www.delcity.net their stuff is great and they sell in small quantitys the guy like us also, another place for good stuff is Heyco--good plastic stuff www.heyco.com
Painless offers 25 & 50 foot rolls of the wire that they use in their harness' Most colors available, ya can check out their website..........www.painlessperformance.com
my local real (not chain) auto parts store has Belden in quite a few colors and sizes, little rolls for $4 each or something. Not the cheapest way to buy it, but it gets the job done, and that's how things work living in a small city.
ebay has a great selection of all the stuff you could need. you have to look in the Business & Industrial section. alot of the stuff is comercial lots. I have bought more wire and heat shrink tube to do 10 cars for the price it would cost to buy the stuff from a supply house for one car. http://business.ebay.com/
Thanks guys. I don't ever want to deal with that cheap, stiff crap, that most auto parts stores sell, again.
If you want good wire make sure it has cross-linked polyethylene insulation it is good for 275 degrees F. We use this stuff for OEM in todays cars which have high underhood temps and the stuff is good for abrasion resistence. Any of your aftermarket wire harness people sell it by the roll 25, 50, and 100 foot. I know painless sells it for sure.
I never bought the old style cloth covered but you might call Bob Drakes or Dennis Carpenter to see if they have a source. I know they get and sell the old style harnesses.
Home Depot has a good selection... use THTN (I think) The stuff with a shiny coating. Its gas and oil resistant. 16 gauge is good for most of the light and guages.
I buy all my common terminal ends (no plastic crimp covering, of course) from Del City and Waytek. And one of them has the asphalt/cotton covered loom too (can't remember which), at cheaper than the specialty places. But to buy old style cloth-covered stuff you'll have to go to brillman.com or riwire.com. I buy Rajah terminals and other stuff from Brillman cause they're cheaper than RI Wire, but I buy the cloth wire from RI because they have a huge selection of colors, stripes/crosshatches, and sizes. I believe RI covers it themselves. If a guy decides to go with old style stuff like cloth and Rajahs, he'll probably end up spending at least twice or three times as much as the modern stuff. Don't forget the old style glass fuses and panel too.
call me a Okie but... I get it from pick and pull.... Its cheep .. for the price of admition You can get as much as you want...
Guys, trust me on this one....I'm in the middle of a total restoration and making TONS of wire harnesses, so I did a ton of research looking for good wire. By the way, for those that haven't looked at the different types of wire, here's a few basics: GXL Wire = Under Hood Applications (High Temperature Wire/High Wear/Abrasion) TXL Wire = Interior Automotive Applications (Same High Temp as GXL, but thinner insulation) SXL Wire = Under Hood Applications - Super Duty (Same High Temp as GXL, but thicker insulation) I did a lot of research looking for good priced GXL/TXL wire over the past year and hands down the best I found was a place called WireBarn.com . They have better prices than ALL of the above mentioned sites...trust me, I checked every single one of them. Prices are lower plus Wirebarn sells wire by the foot from 10 feet to 100 foot per color / gage. Various lengths, gages and prices. They sell wire packs also - 8 packs and 6 packs of wire in 25 foot sections and a bunch of colors. I bought the 10 pack GXL wire in 18 Gauge and it is great wire!! Stuff doesn't melt even at 800 degrees F (and I mean the casing...outside of the wire, not holding on the copper). Cool part is that they sell it by the foot as I stated (I bought some 14 gage 10 footers for my headlights - didn't need 100 foot of every color like most of the online stores so this was perfect). I'm rewiring my whole Cobra (and I mean the ENTIRE Vehicle wiring). The great thing is that their wire is Made in USA!!! yeah, baby! I love EVERYTHING made in USA... Here's the link to the 18GXL 10 Pack I bought. 10 Pack 18 Gage GXL Wire - TEN (10) Colors, 25 Foot Each Color: Black,Red,Blue,Green,Yellow,Brown, White, Orange, Pink, Violet There are quite a few places to buy wire online, but this was the best we found. We bought from about 5 places in the past year and this one was the best. If you don't want 500 or 100 feet of every color, wirebarn is the ticket IMHO. I love these smileys....going to town on them! <!-- / message -->
Check out this ebay Item number: 280875375270, seems a better deal than the painless wire, probably enough to share with a buddy or do more than one job... Or if you know exactly how much length of wire you will need and choice of guage and colors Waytekwire looks good also...
@39 Ford.....Napa wire is just cheapo pvc wire from my experience- also called GPT wire. I wouldn't wire anything I cared about with that GPT stuff. Not that it is bad wire, just not made for high temperatures in cars. @ fiftyv8 and manyolcars...... I checked out your ebay link above (choice of 5 of 12 colors by seller "allbatterysalesand....." , but that is just PVC wire like at the big box auto stores (GPT Wire). Cars do NOT come with that cheap wire. They come with GXL and TXL wire and a little bit of SXL wire for the battery cables and starter wires. That price is not that much less than what you would pay for the good stuff. You need to check out the wire from wirebarn.com. They have a 10 pack of 14 GXL wire in 10 colors...it's perfect because it is 25 feet of every color and I can make two harnesses from it. Here's the link.....truly great stuff. http://www.wirebarn.com/10-Pack-14-...lowBrown-White-Orange-Pink-Violet-_p_474.html The wire from http://www.wirebarn.com is top notch. I compared a piece to my 14 gage wire on my car (headlight wires) and the outside and inside copper is identical diameter on a digital caliper measurement. I did some reading on the GPT wire and it is good for some things (washing machines, TVs, VCRs, computers and such, but nothing that is exposed to high temperatures). GPT is OK for its made for applications, but definitely not cars. I think its dangerous to not use automotive wire, at least under the hood. Maybe the interior, but not under the hood. I found 3 main places for wire, but wirebarn was the cheapest and best deal I could fine. Waytech wire and Del City were decent, but they required minimum buy of 250 feet or more, but http://wirebarn.com sells wire down to 10 foot of any gage and any color. That rocked for my last project since I only needed 7 feet of 10 colors. Supply is a bit more limited at wirebarn though, but price trumped that for me.
That's THHN, and it is good stuff. Only issue is ensuring you get THHN with the smaller strands, so your wire is more flexible. Not all THHN is the same inside! Some of it has so few strands that when you uncoil it the stuff winds up like a rat's nest. It usually starts out around 14 strand, which is the inexpensive stuff Home Depot sells. It goes up to 27 strand, and for machine tool use where flexibility is really needed, it can be even higher. I go to my local electrical supply house and buy 500 ft. rolls, as I know I'll eventually use it, and it's cheaper to do that then buy smaller rolls, or cut lengths anywhere else.
I've used Rhode Island Wiring for old wires, also Restoration Stuff has wire and their an Alliance vendor. http://www.riwire.com/ http://www.restorationstuff.com/
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