Ripping out the old wiring harness...

[chester rides again]

I don't think I've posted here in quite a few years. Hell, I haven't driven my '68 109 in the last year, other than around the block a few times. I've just been to busy with work, kids, and life in general.

All that crap aside, I am sick of my electrical system not functioning properly. 2 years ago, I took the truck to a local mechanic to help me get it past inspection as the turn signals, brake lights, wipers and probably something else wouldn't work. He managed to do something so it got past inspection, but the next day, my wiper and turn signals went out again.

I now want to drive this truck on a more regular basis as I'm working 3 miles from home and my life is showing hints of returning to normal... well, close to what i might call normal.

After opening up the instrument panel and staring at the mess of cloth coated, electrical taped and randomly colored PO wires I opened the hood only to find a crud coated wiring loom, a relay floating in mid-air, and more random wires. I've now hit upon the point that the easiest thing for me to do would be to rip all the electrical wiring out and install an aftermarket wiring harness with a suitable number of circuits and properly labeled wires.

I didn't find too many posts on this subject but there seems to be a few companies that are popping up:
1) Painless Performance - looks more expensive than others
2)EZ Wiring - nothing special
3) Kwik Wiring - good $, American made
4) Keep It Clean - again, nothing special - another forum mentioned cheap fuse panel
... I'm sure there are many more.

Anyway, I'm leaning towards Kwik Wiring, but I can't find anyone who's put one of their Universal 14 circuit budget wiring harnesses in a series Land Rover. From what I'm reading, most of these kits allow you to just rip all the wiring out, layout their wiring, attach connectors and ....wait for it.... enjoy driving. The new harness will have each circuit's destination printed on the wires every few inches - bye, bye weird color coding!

Any comments or thoughts?

Jeff

[siii8873]

Hey Jeff,
I've rewired a few rovers, not really that difficult. I'm not far away and could take a look if you want.

I was wondering what happened to you have not seen your rover for quite some time.

[Eric W S]

Our hosts sell the right harness. Or British Wiring. Not that big a deal. My suggestion would be to get a pre made harness that matches the original. Easier to trouble shoot and matches the Green Bible. Once installed, a good oroginal style harness should solve most of your Lucas Gremlins.

[TeriAnn]

I didn't find too many posts on this subject but there seems to be a few companies that are popping up:
1) Painless Performance - looks more expensive than others
2)EZ Wiring - nothing special
3) Kwik Wiring - good $, American made
4) Keep It Clean - again, nothing special - another forum mentioned cheap fuse panel
... I'm sure there are many more.

Any comments or thoughts?

Jeff

You are aware that our hosts sell wiring harnesses.

If you can't find exactly what you are looking for here, try British Wiring. Besides stock wiring harnesses they have harnesses wired for alternators so you don't have to figure out how to bypass the external voltage regulator.

New barrel connectors are very tight. If you are doing a full harness it is worth buying the special tool for making barrel connections and a dab of dielectric grease will help keeping them from oxidizing over time.

I have a wire colour chart that will help you figure which wire goes where.

If you need to add extra wires for any accessories you might have I suggest following the British wire colour standard for the extra wires. You can get striped wires by the foot and crimp on connectors. I suggest getting the proper crimping tool for the connectors.

[chester rides again]

How about wanting to add an improved fuse system? I realize stock would fit perfectly (or at least very close) but i was thinking the extra circuits would be nice for things such as a CB, other lights, and future things...

I have an alternator installed so the stock harness is approaching twice the price of aftermarket...

[o2batsea]

Welcome back.
I bought a BW/Autosparks harness. I ended up cutting all the wrap off it and doing quite a few modifications to it. In my experience, what I would do is order the wire and make the harness myself using the old one, along with the wiring diagram, as a guide.
I'd spend the couple hundred bucks in tools and materials because it isn't difficult to replicate one. having the tools like the bullet crimper and the spade terminal crimper allows you to do future modifications and repairs.
TeriAnn has a nice wiring guide page on her site that gives you the color codes for the wiring. You pretty much need two gauges of green, white, red and black. Then you need the tracer color wires for the stop and turn signals. Oh and a small amount of purple for the dome light.
When I added more stuff like fog lights and seat heaters and heated windscreen and air conditioning and all, I used the wire colors from the Defender electrical manual on RAVE.
BW/Autosparks has all the components you need and the nice thing is they sell wire in meter increments. You don't have to buy huge rolls.
Go with the PVC wrap. Also buy a good rachet type stripper.
I have a nice electrical spares Plano box now with assorted bullets and terminals and vinyl covers and grommets and stuff.

PS re: fuses
The 2A had one fuse in the whole system. That's OK for the standard setup but if you add other circuits, you may want to add more fuses. Especially if you upgrade the headlamps to the Vision Plus type (or take outs from a RRC) They have both old-school Lucas 6 fuse holders, and the new modular mini panels with relay boards mini fuses and it makes adding future components way easier. Not cheap but the stuff is very nice.

[bensdad]

o2batsea,
How would I know which gauges of wire go where? Thanks.

[o2batsea]

o2batsea,
How would I know which gauges of wire go where? Thanks.

Just use the old harness as a guide. Pretty much all the circuit wires use what they call 14 strand which is roughly equal to 18g wire. For the fat brown feed wire to the key switch (and the lights) use 65 strand. When I did stuff like add fused circuits, I used slightly fatter 28 strand wire to the feed side of the fuse holder. So when you order wire, order like 5 meters of 28strand in the main colors of green and white, about 10 of black, and all else you can go with 14 strand. Except of course the brown wire. Get like 5 meters of fat wire for the charge circuit, and 5 meters of 28 strand to feed the fuses.
I won't bore you with how I put solenoids on all my main switched feeds. I also repurposed an old Painless headlight solenoid kit to feed the Hella headlamps.

[rickv100]

Jeff ,

I am in the same situation as I have smoke coming from beneath the dash .

I have an exmod truck and no one makes the harness with the center light switch.

Rick

[rwollschlager]

Welcome back.
I would order the wire and make the harness myself using the old one, along with the wiring diagram, as a guide.
I'd spend the couple hundred bucks in tools and materials because it isn't difficult to replicate one. having the tools like the bullet crimper and the spade terminal crimper allows you to do future modifications and repairs.
TeriAnn has a nice wiring guide page on her site that gives you the color codes for the wiring. You pretty much need two gauges of green, white, red and black. Then you need the tracer color wires for the stop and turn signals. Oh and a small amount of purple for the dome light.
When I added more stuff like fog lights and seat heaters and heated windscreen and air conditioning and all, I used the wire colors from the Defender electrical manual on RAVE.
BW/Autosparks has all the components you need and the nice thing is they sell wire in meter increments. You don't have to buy huge rolls.
Go with the PVC wrap. Also buy a good rachet type stripper.
I have a nice electrical spares Plano box now with assorted bullets and terminals and vinyl covers and grommets and stuff.

PS re: fuses
The 2A had one fuse in the whole system. That's OK for the standard setup but if you add other circuits, you may want to add more fuses. Especially if you upgrade the headlamps to the Vision Plus type (or take outs from a RRC) They have both old-school Lucas 6 fuse holders, and the new modular mini panels with relay boards mini fuses and it makes adding future components way easier. Not cheap but the stuff is very nice.

THIS. I don't agree with Bill often, but everything he said here is on the money!
Stick with stock colour codes, buy the proper ratcheting crimping tools and bullet connectors from British Wiring (also get the bullet connector tool), and you can make your own in short order. I rewired my series III 88 this summer (with a NOS harness) and I found myself glued to TeriAnn's website and the green bible, and discovered the proper wiring tools are worth their weight in gold. By making it yourself you will have a ton of experience (in a good way) and wiring in future accessories in the proper colour code will be child's play. Also, di-electric grease and heat shrink are helpful in most connections as well.

Installation of the hot rod kit only seems easier. "ripping the old one out, laying the new one out, attaching connections" are the three overly-simplified steps for installing any wiring harness. You might as well keep the stock colour code heaven forbid something heads south and you or a future owner needs to fix it.

-Rob