re-wiring suggestions

[Anonymous]

Hello, I have noticed some corrosion in some of the wiring in my engine compartment and some wires seem to be fairly brittle. I am looking for suggestions to solve this problem. I was thinking of buying kits to enable me to re-wire the engine compartment, but if i am doing that should i go w/ a painless kit and give the car a whole re-wire? Any one have any experience w/ any of these kits or any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Mark

 

[66Monterey]

Most of the Mustang repro parts stores have wiring kits available exactly as original. You can replace everything, or just one section. Not cheap, but nearly foolproof.

 

[strat1960s]

Once you have re-wired your engine compartment, I would suggest using wiring loom to reduce the heat.

Ted

 

[LaGrasta]

To answer your question about Painless, I'd say no. Those are great harnesses, but for our average needs, they are overkill. Your current harness provides all you need and you're only replacing it due to age. Make it easy on yourself and just replace exactly what you have now. If you were building a street rod or something of the like, then you'd have no choice but to go with Painless.

 

[Anonymous]

To answer your question about Painless, I'd say no. Those are great harnesses, but for our average needs, they are overkill. Your current harness provides all you need and you're only replacing it due to age. Make it easy on yourself and just replace exactly what you have now. If you were building a street rod or something of the like, then you'd have no choice but to go with Painless.

I agree the Painless units are nice, but if you replace the stock wiring with new harnesses you will be in great shape. The painless unit is heavily priced, and in my opinion overkill unless you are installing a lot of modern devices...

I replaced mine with Aftermarket replicas available from most parts houses, and also added a bunch of custom wiring for Gauges, Stereo, Power windows and locks... not nearly as expensive as the Painless kit, functions perfectly, and I have a stock reference for wiring color and routing...

The most expensive section in the wiring of the car is the under dash harness including the fuse box... if you are tearing your dash apart, then you might want to replace that...

Otherwise just get the engine and alternator feeds, and run those for now. I did each section of mine in stages... the interior dash set was first, then the engine and trunk areas. Was VERY easy to do, since everything is a direct copy of what you have...

It is also a good idea to run some wire looms to help protect the new harnesses from heat.

 

[XFlow_Fairlane]

what I have been doing is replacing sections as needed in my car. since ford used plain flat style trailer connectors for almost everything I picked up an assortment of them and made new harnesses that plug in stock. the nice things that painless like the relay and fuse block that snap together can be bought much cheaper...I just bought 4 4 circuit blocks that are stackable for $2 a piece and are the same ones that painless uses and sells for $5. same goes for relay blocks. you can buy a 4 circuit block and a relay and plug it into a factory circuit and run a hot to a relay on it and power a bunch of stuff off it and have it all be reversible. my H4 headlights on the relays were all a plug-n-play deal on my car using this method. getting ready to wire up under the dash for gauges, stereo, air ride switches and such using my own harnesses that plug into the factory main harness.


so I say if you need a new engine harness buy a repo and add anything you need to it. if you have a duraspark put a horseshoe connector on it instead, ad a feed for a electric choke or fan. some wire looming is great for this since your new stuff can just be taped up and added into it. or oyu can go fancy and wrap it in harness tape.
nick

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for input. I am not planning to tear apart the dash for now so I will just concentrate on re-wiring the engine compartment for now. What kits etc. would i need to just re-wire the engine compartment? If anyone had a store and part # also that would be appreciated Thanks again and again all help will be greatly appreciated. Mark

 

[LaGrasta]

I like Dearborn best.

 

[falcon fanatic]

This might be a good time to make some improvements. I'm in the midst of converting to an alternator with an integrated voltage regulator. This allows you to lose the old style voltage regulator. I'm also taking advantage of the new wiring required to run the alternator by feeding directly to a terminal block and distributing power from there. I'm feeding a pair of relays to power the headlights without going through the dash like the stock setup. This should give much more power to the headlights and reduce the strain on the dash wiring. It also gives me much more power to the dash which simplifies powering aftermarket radio, alarm system, aftermarket guages and whatever other doodads I end up with. Wrirng the voltage regulator to the generator from the terminal block gives the voltage regulator a more accurate measure of load as well. I think the stock wiring sort of bypasses this detail.

I've had to dissect bits of the cruddy old harness to make all of this happen, so it might be cool to plan the whole job to coincide with replacing the harness. Check out M.A.D. electrics for more guidance on this conversion