Thread: Electricals - phew

Tweet

Originally Posted by robot

Dave, didnt realize that some kits had schematics....most that I have seen use the crazy written instructions that makes no sense.... they do more to confuse the assemblyer. I havent use many kits since we do our own wiring from scratch anyway in order to choose the components that we want to use (size/type of wire, connections, and components). Painless' descriptions are a real pain.

mike in tucson

I just flopped a page of my schematic on the scanner and took a picture of the center (my scanner wont do "B" size pages). It will give you an idea of what I'm using. The quality of the AAW schematics is good - this is poor due to my scanner

It's still in progress??? And I'm not showing the rest of the mess of snake pit of wires..... yet

we will all know youve gone over the edge when that chipmunk starts talking or maybe he will start posting on your theads guard your pass word LOL ted

reminds me of the last time I panicked and replaced the control module on my AC package unit for the house. Turns out someone knocked the fan switch on the thermostat ON. THAT is why the fan wouldn't shut off.

oops.

anyone need a Rheem control board?

Originally Posted by firebird77clone

reminds me of the last time I panicked and replaced the control module on my AC package unit for the house. Turns out someone knocked the fan switch on the thermostat ON. THAT is why the fan wouldn't shut off.

oops.

anyone need a Rheem control board?

Hang on to it - you'll need it the day after you sell it !!

My wiring story for my '71 pickup project.... Plugged in the battery the other day and everything worked great, the relays for the new headlights, all the new gauges, most everything...with one small exception.... I must have had a Norwegian moment when hooking up the tailights, when the turn signal lever is moved to a right turn, the left lights come on, and vice versa... Guess when I was laying on my back hooking up the wiring my Norwegian brain got left and right bass-ackwards......

IC2, I am just reporting in to keep myself going. Yesterday the outside air was a reasonable 44 F and surprisingly my two small radiative heaters (1500 watts each) got the garage up to 64 F in about an hour. As a former Chemist I have seen quite a few lab fires so I don't want to use any heater with an open flame in a small frame garage where I have a few flammables. Anyway I checked with "Rick" at It's-A-Snap and with the guys at Brattons where I got my LED tailights about the tailights. They both said that I don't need diodes in the wires which connect the brake light and the turn signal to the same tailight since the blinker circuit in the GM type column takes care of that. It should work so that if you brake while the turn signal is on one tailight should go bright with the brake light while the other should continue to blink. I still don't know how the GM column (Ididit in my case) does this but I went ahead and wired both wires (brake and turn signal) in a "Y" to each tail light without any diodes so we will see how that goes. I hid a bit of a rat's nest of the wires down behind the "rumble-seat-tank" and really I don't see how to make it any neater since I really can't get my arm down in there so I just let the wires flop down in the space along the rear of the body, out of sight with a few tie wraps. Any comments on putting the brake and turn signal wires together?

By the way I have a gap of about 1/8" at the bottom of the rumble lid and the body which I have tried to seal with a clear strip of door edge plastic but I am sure in a heavy rain it will leak down into the back of the body. I can seal the upper parts of the lid with weather seal foam strip but I think it will still leak along the bottom edge. There is no problem with rust since the body is fiberglass so my question to folks on this Forum is whether it is a good idea to drill several 1/2" diameter holes along the bottom edge of the rear of the body to provide drains when it rains?

Dave, my wiring kit from It's-A-Snap has a yellow wire for the left rear turn signal and a green wire for the right so I think I got it correct except for wondering about putting the brake and turn signal wires together. We had relatively mild weather here in range of my small heaters but I see the North West is heading into blizzard conditions so as long as the power stays on it may be time to hunker down with the PC? The problem is that usually our rural power usually goes out with ice on the wires and a PC won't work with candle power. I have a home generator but it is mainly to keep the TV and refridgerator going.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

IC2 I went out to the garage to take a few pictures and found the thermometer reading 26 F so I will wait and give the sun a chance to warm it up a bit. Thanks to this Forum I can openly show my amateur installation and get suggestions from the many pros here. The first picture shows a "down view" of the new wires behind the gas tank and it is embarrassingly messy. Thanks to this picture I can see that I can add several more ties to make this much neater. I got a bag of ties from Radio Shack for $8 so I have plenty of ties. In there is the ground and sender for the gas tank and the wires to the tail lights. Nobody will see it once the seat cover is on that tank but you and I will know it is a rats nest unless I tidy it up some, thanks! The second picture is not as bad as it looks. I have just pulled the unneeded wires from the harness to the rear such as for a dome light (in a roadster?) and backup lights and coiled them on the floor. Rick at It's-A-Snap says to just cut off unneeded wires with a short pigtail at the firewall in case you want to add them back later and pull the fuses to those wires. The striped wire coil on the floor is a heavier gauge (12?) intended for an electric fuel pump with a 30 amp fuse but I am going to use that for my cigar lighter/power outlet to recharge a cell phone or a small electric tire pump. Thus at the firewall there is a seeming mess of coils that are not installed yet. I note that Rick emphasized that there has to be a long ground wire from the gas tank sending unit all the way to the fuel gauge in the dash. The other gauges will be grounded to the 1" square tubing framework in the dash which is grounded in several places to the frame. I know I am showing the gory details of my amateur installation but I don't mind if anyone sees some problem so let me know. One of my foibles was to drop a nut and a small wrench BEHIND the 3/8" aluminum plate I used to mount the floor dimmer switch (my generation used a floor switch and I dislike the dimmer on the steering column, besides with no clutch my left foot needs something to do!). I did not mind losing a nut down there but not a Craftsman wrench to rattle around so I had to cut out a 1" diameter hole with a hole saw to fish out the wrench instead of dismantling the whole firewall plate which is now a complicated sandwich of stainless steel on the engine side and 3/8" aluminum on the interior to mount stuff on. It was easier to saw the hole than rebuild the firewall! I will have to add an "inspection cover" for that hole from some sheet metal.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

I keep my shop a balmy 70 degrees when I'm out there working. I shut the t-stat down to 45 at night, takes about 30 minutes to warm it up. My hands just won't function in the cold.....

When I get to the 'maro again, I'm going to try one of Speedway's wiring kits, they're not as fancy and detailed as some of the others but they're a heck of a lot less money and still have decent wiring, connectors and components... The 'maro will have nothing fancy for electrical systems, just your basic go-fast machine so I don't really see a need for having a bunch of circuits I'll never need....

Got the pickup wiring all done, everything works fine. I retained the stock harness and altered some of the circuits to accomodate the upgrades.

All the electrical pieces have come a long ways from the days of just starting with a bunch of spools of different colored wire, sketch out a few of the circuits, and going at it.... Way easier now!!!!

Don - I have to say that your wiring "mess" is normal. When you say 'done', then you start to wire tie every thing together. I think I said above that my learning curve, or words to that effect, was that you need a lot of preplanning to have a wiring module behind the seat. Instead of having wire ties, the entire run - all 4 of mine are now bandaged with an orange 3M tape the entire length of the floor. Not the way I wanted to go - and I do understand that it isn't the favored and best way and will end up creating a future hardship(I already have to add a wire, but it's the only feasible way without having a lumpy carpet. I'm clamping it to the floor along the door sill as well as one hidden run up the middle for the radio and neutral start switch. Oh yeah, as a note, I finally got my Vintage Air switches

Temps - my garage/shop is at this writing, 38*, but it's only about 15* outside. I'm surprised that it's that warm since we were hit with an ice storm and the power was out for ~18 hours. Then to make things more interesting, my generator decided to die - another project. The engine has no spark - the low oil shut off created a problem one other time, so will try to bypass and make another attempt to run for the "next time". We're lucky as most folks are still down and out and might not have power for another day or several. We have several very large branches down, mostly from my slob of a neighbor's yard but no trees. Since it's supposed to be in the 40's Sunday and 50's Monday, my chores are laid out. Then it's back to the car.

Dave S - I do understand about hands that don't work in the cold. I don't need 70*, but 60-65 is nice.

My first wiring jobs were a few rolls of wire - color coded - who cares!!! Now I have many spare rolls of wire for add ons - but all are color coded. NAPA (Federal Mogul made in USA) wire is $6.99 a roll now wow - for 15(#12) to 40(#18) feet of wire!!!

IC2, One other sad factor about the ties is that I have already had two cases where I had to add a wire and tried to clip off the previous tie only to find that tragically I had cut one of the wires too! In those cases I patched the error with a straight pipe crimp connector after I found I do not have a soldering iron hot enouth to solder the ends together. I have to wonder whether those crimps will corrode later on? I think with long wires a lot of the heat just spreads out into the wire rather than remain local at the desired solder location. Thanks for your encouragement! After cutting two wires accidentally I was reluctant to add ties that I might have to remove, but as you say if it is now essentially finished back there I can add more ties, but not too many so that if I ever have to add a wire I won't have to cut so many ties and chance another accident! The bottom line for me is if I have to remove a tie it is better to slide a sharp knife along the grain of the wires rather than use snips. So far here in Va we only have frost and a lot of rain in the last two days, but no ice storm. We live in a small forest with buried power lines but we are still at the mercy of nearby power lines on poles in wooded areas, although one wonders how many trees have yet to fall after the thinning from Hurricane Isabel several years ago.

Don Shillady/teen rodder

IC2, sorry to bother you but I need an idea. I spent a few hours yesterday afternoon removing and disassembling my headlights because the pigtail leads on the H4 units were too short to make it through the braided cable to the radiator. It was straighforward to crimp extension leads and feed them back through the conduits. However, the next step is to connect the headlight and turn signal wires. So far I have all the wires to the front lights in a corregated plastic tube down under the steering column to the outside of the driver side of the frame and held there by a rubber clamp. The problem I am asking about is that when I look at the routing of the wires there is a lot of moving stuff behind the radiator and not much room. Inside the frame rails there will be hot headers. There is already a stainless brake line across the bottom of the radiator area. When I try to figure out how to route the wires across the front under the radiator I run into the frame rails on each side. The worst case scenario would be to use a small hole saw to make two holes in the frame at the firewall down into the frame rails and then two more holes in the frame at the base of the radiator. I have just slogged through using a hole saw to fish out a wrench I dropped behind the hi/lo-beam switch through 3/8" aluminum so I do not look forward to cutting four holes in the steel frame rails. Putting the wires down into the frame would be easy but fishing out the wires at the front end would be tricky and require a pretty large hole to work through. Am I missing some easy way to thread the wires across the front end without drilling holes in the frame? How did you get the wires across the front end?

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Hi Don - never a bother -so don't hesitate. If you would like it, I can PM you my "real" email address/name and we can go that way as well. Just remember, I'm an amateur as well as a retired OF, so my methods aren't always as well thought out as they should have been.

Right side lights are up and operating - but now is only a punch list item #25(??) to clean up later. The wires are only wire tied to an electric fan brace. What I did was make up a bracket on the left side and put a 3 post terminal block for the head light wiring. This is for a couple of reasons - first for ease of disassembly and the second for a "professional" appearance. What I will do later on is run the wires below the radiator to clear them out of sight