Thread: Suggestions on routing wires

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Folks, I am helping a friend wire his 32 hi-boy. It's an original steel car with a fully boxed frame. We are using an EZ Wire harness with the fuse box up under the dash. We want to hide the wires as much as possible. Looking for suggestions on the best way to route wires out of the body into the engine compartment. We plan to drill holes in the floor and then in the inside of the frame to route the lighting wires to the front.

Would love to hear any ideas and pictures you might have.

thanks

Pat

Not much of a deuce guy anymore Pat, but Ken Thurm certainly has some very clean approaches to wire routing on his thread......

Stu, I want to see how to do that too so I hope you have pictures soon. This is not very helpful but I know it can be done as shown here on a neighbor's beautiful deuce (Porsche Red). The point of these pictures is that you can't see anything, that is the wires are hidden in the frame rails so this is what it should look like but not how to do it. As a practical matter how are you planning to fish out the wire at the other end?

Don Shillady
Retired SCientist/teen rodder

I'm in "the reverse stage" from you currently. I pulled my body off the frame today for paint. I also used the EZ wire kit in my high boy 32 and have driven it several years and about 8000 miles with no problems. Very easy to wire and I liked the labeling on the wires.

But one thing I did not have the forsight to do during the original build was to install more master plugs between what I would call the "sub harnesses" (like front end, trunk, head lights, under frame). It would have made the disassembly for paint much quicker.

I learned a neat trick on this build. This is something i am going to do on my build. I am going to come out of the floor at the base of the firewall through rubber grommets. Take a piece of stainless tubing and a bender and run it along the base of the valve cover. Bend it so it follows the contour of the bell housing. Make a slight flare on each end so the wires don't get cut. To make tabs, take some flat stock and hammer it over a t-dolly or a piece of pipe and bolt it to the valve covers. This is how I am going to run the wires to my alternator and compressor.I am going to do this soon. I can post a thread if anyone is interested. John Palmer made a good point and it was also brought up to me. Where anything leaves the body, have a plug in connector in case you ever have to take the car apart.The stainless was ran next to the paper tablet about half way up the valve cover.

Thanks guys, your ideas confirm mine of putting a hole in the trans tunnel and routing them that way. Can you suggest a grommet that will seal around a wire bundle?

Pat

After looking at a lot of possibilities for a grommet around my steering column without success, I finally used a short piece of sponge rubber felder welt about 1/2" wide and had to stuff it around the column in the hole. I still have some short lengths of that stuff and could use it for wiring grommets. You can make it look like a grommet if you put the cut on the bottom out of sight. Thanks for the idea.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Any good hardware store has a good selection of grommets in various sizes. I just use a step bit to drill out the holes. Much cheaper than buying a variety of large drill bits. To wire the rear of the 32 I showed small wiring raceways were built out of stainless and the wiring was totally hidden.