Wiring (or re-wiring) my adventure

[flaflier]

It started innocuously enough, driving to a local car show, the charge light right above the key came on. My wife and I continued, as my thinking was, we are only 5 miles from the house, the car has very little draw, so what's the problem? Well we made it, hung for a little while, and the car started right up and we went home. My thinking was either the voltage regulator, or the alternator had given up the ghost. I replaced the voltage regulator, and when I pulled the alternator to take it and have it checked, the terminal end fell off.. Well, I had it checked, it's fine, so I figured the problem was the terminal end. This is where my adventure starts..
I strip back the electrical tape so I can put on new ends, and the wires seem to be a little burned up. So I continue opening up the tape, and what do I find?



It appears there was a little issue in the previous life, and someone taped over that issue. It appears when it had the issue, several of the wires had melted the insulation off, so someone put black tape over the wires, and re-bundled them. I ended up opening the harness back almost to the firewall before I found solid wire, and then soldered new wires in.



So I get the front harness all back in shape, and think "now I got this".. well the electric fuel pump had been fed from the front harness where the ballast resistor goes, so I disconnect it, check the wiring diagram (oh, and the front harness matches a 6XX chassis, not a 1XX chassis) and find that the fuel pump should be powered from the rear harness. I think "cool, this should be easy", and open the trunk and find the blue wire... well, it's dead. I think "ok, let's trace it out", and make it to the front-rear harness connector...

If you look very closely in the top left corner, you will see a disconnected blue wire.. and lot's more issues!!! A few more pics of those issues:



So, I decide I have seen enough, take a few more pics, and proceed to remove the dash and the dash harness:


First order of business is to recover the dash, because as I investigate, I find that the under-hood fire I knew was there was also under the dash, wanna see how I knew?


So I strip the vinyl off of the dash


Once it's bare, I add a new layer of fiberglass resin to the backside for strength, and then recover in vinyl. Then my wife asks me, "why didn't you do it in leather"?.. so, I strip the new vinyl off, get the leather from ebay, and proceed to recover.

Everything is going fine until I am putting in a switch with that damn slotted-round front nut, and I decide to tighten in up just a bit with a screwdriver...slip...and now I have a deep scratch in the leather....so... I proceed to once again strip the dash, and luckily I have enough leather to recover it... but before I do, I cover an extra switch hole, and realign another so everything is symmetrical..


With the dash being covered, it's on to the dash harness. I decided I didn't like the fact that the main harness wasn't supported, so I made some supports, and then cleaned up all of the wiring, relabeling everything.


I added 2 new gauges while I was at it, as the sensors for the old ones didn't look so good.



Now with everything redone, and relabeled (thank you Bob for a GREAT wiring diagram) I am able to put the dash back in. I did remove the heater, as in FLA, we don't really need additional heat...
I will take some new pictures this weekend and continue this, as it's getting close, but it ain't done!

[Tommy]

1. Nice job!
2. Don't you just love doing a forensic investigation?
3. Every time I make one thing better, the things around it look like they need attention too.
4. It's very satisfying to look at your car and know that you played an important role in it running right.

[DanEC]

Quite a project. That should raise your peace of mind on the next outing. Nice work.

[Young1]

Persistence and patience are wiring virtues. Besides it sounds like you had some good input from the wife on the project. You can now rest assured it was done right.

[flaflier]

Love the forensics, and yes, I will have a much better piece of mind once I am done...

So here is where the missing wiper relay (another thread) was, and what I did was just remove jumper, put new 6-pin ends on the existing wires, and eliminate the need for the relay. I can always insert one if I so choose later, but with the frequency that I use the wipers, I can park them myself.


Here are a few pictures of the dash installed, all wiring complete except for the rear harness (hanging down on LHS):




You can see the Taurus fan relays attached to the bottom of the glove box.

I'm not a smoker, but need a place to charge up my cell phone!


So on to the rear harness, so I can power the pump! Here is a pic of the disconnected blue wire, and the connection of a 1xx rear harness to a 6xx dash harness. Some wires match, but the turn signal and tank sender wires are different colors, so I had to make sure I didn't cross them.

I am going to cut off the 9-pin connectors and put new ones on, that's todays project. Last night I cleaned up the trunk wiring...

This is before, with a few connections bare....

And after, with everything safe now..
One thing I forgot to mention is that while I had the steering column out, I rebuild it too.

I will take a few additional pics, but here is a picture of the TR-6 column bushings that I replaced. The one one the left was the top one, the one on the right was the bottom. You can see that the right one was melted extensively... wondered why the steering was a bit heavy!! I also replaced the lower steering shaft with one from a later chassis (can't remember which one off the top of my head, but I will get a pic or 2 of that too... getting closer!!

[patrickt]

You're doing a nice job - and it will familiarize you with your car's innards more than you know. In a way, it's kind of "fun."

[Rick Parker]

The individual orange wire nuts are not intended for automotive usage. You would be well advised to eliminate each of them with a fresh wire run of the correct gauge into each of the end multi pin connectors. Keep in mind that each wire break and connector is a potential trouble spot. Solder and heat shrink at each terminal end will go a long way to avaoid what happened previously. You are doing a good job, wiring is very satisfying when completed.

Put heat shrink tubing or tape the Male/Female spade terminals use for the parking lights wiring. Eliminate any potential for moisture to gain entry.

[RET_COP]

Oh GREAT! now i'm going to have nightmares. Under dash stuff scares me.
Really though- Bravo! flaflier, well done and nice work
Lou

[flaflier]

It was fun until yesterday, when I wanted to go for a ride. Got the fuel pump hooked up, everything electrical working.. go to start the car, and no spark...
Run through the diagnostics for the box (6), and it sparks just fine, but the vacuum advance pro billet seems to be kaput. Take it apart and I see some rust on the magnetic pickup mountings, but nothing that SHOULD preclude it from firing. Anyway, decided I will make the msd and pro billet spares, and ordered a Pentronix ignitor III distributor and matching coil. So now I get to wait until it's delivered, clean up more wiring... get to open the harness from the passenger side now, as the MSD wiring is all intermingled in with the rest.

Almost convinced myself that since I was taking the dizzy out, I should just take the intake off, and install the cam that I got from Pat / Brent... but sanity smacked me in the head and told me not now!!

Jim

[patrickt]

Originally Posted by flaflier

Almost convinced myself that since I was taking the dizzy out, I should just take the intake off, and install the cam that I got from Pat / Brent... but sanity smacked me in the head and told me not now!!

Never open a new can of worms until you have re-canned the ones that are currently wiggling on your plate.

[tkb289]

Originally Posted by patrickt

Never open a new can of worms until you have re-canned the ones that are currently wiggling on your plate.

Well said ...

[tkb289]

flaflier,

That's a lot of work, you are really doing a first rate job. Should be better than new once you are done.

[flaflier]

So, the saga continues. first, before I reinstalled the column, I had to replace the turn signal switch, as you can see my old one was McGyvered!

Here is a quick view of the old and new steering shaft, since I was there anyway. The u-joints on the old were quite stiff.
Old

New


So back to the saga, I bought the new dizzy, and while I was waiting for it to arrive, I decided to get the wiring ready. First I removed the MSD box and wiring, and since the tach was triggered from the box, I had to trace the wire back to the harness, as the MSD was on the passenger side, and now with the new dizzy, it will be triggered from the coil. So while I am tracing, I find a red wire that was tied in to feed the MSD ignition power (switched), but didn't know where it came from. So the sleuthing begins again.
I find the red wire turns into a white wire


And the wire was overtaped to the existing harness, once that tape was cut, guess what I found?

You guessed it, more bare wire...



The wire was originally black, and went from 1 side of the harness to the other. Once I got the harness opened up, I found out it was the ground for the voltage regulator.



So here is what was left of the ground

So now that I have opened up ALL of the harness, I believe I have cleaned up all of the "issues".
BTW, I did find that the tach signal wire had been spliced under the dash, so I was able to open that up and re-connect. The arrow point to the new connection before I taped it up.

So now I have switched power and tach trigger over at the coil, I can button the wiring up and continue to get her back on the road. I will probably install the new Petronix tomorrow, if I get some time.

Jim

[YerDugliness]

Geez...what a journey.

My replica has some unterminated wires. Fortunately I have had very little electrical work to do, but just like winter, I know it's coming.

If I do it, though, I will map the electrical devices and have a custom loom made...strip the entire other loom and go all new. I see from your photos that the loom covers can hide problems as well as they can protect the wires inside....

I usually put mine on jackstands for a few months in January, this year it will be to get the exhaust system removed, the sidepipes chromed, and get the headers wrapped. I have no doubt that someday it will be to deal with issues such as you are experiencing.

Cheers for tackling this yourself!!!

Dugly

[Rick Parker]

flaflier:

Electrical work like this is so very tedious and so time consuming. I went back to your 1st post, have you determined what fried the ground wire. Was an individual circuit overloaded in an earlier life or perhaps did the regulator points stick?

[flaflier]

Rick,
There was an under dash / under hood fire sometime in the 26 year life of 154. I believe it was caused by grounding the battery, as it appears that most of the fried wires were either grounds or main power wires. Most of the secondary wiring is completely intact. And I agree, this is tedious work, but it is quite satisfying knowing that once I am done, I won't have to worry about it! I also have gained quite a bit of knowledge about the wiring, so if something does go wrong, I know where it is fed from and how to fix it.

Jim

[flaflier]

Dugly,
Your are right, electrical issues are coming! It's funny, as I started this with a broken lug on the alternator, and what a can of worms I opened!
I give Pat credit for the advice, "Never open a new can of worms until you have re-canned the ones that are currently wiggling on your plate". I thought about just buying a new harness, but in my mind, having traced out most wires and studied the wiring diagram, I have gained much more knowledge than I would have by replacing the harness.
And down here, January is driving season!!

Jim

[Dwight]

My Cobra is fuel injected and I used a Mustang harness. A couple of years ago I had a starter to go bad and it burned three ground wires under the dash.
I added "another" larger ground from the battery to the ground buss bar under the dash and increased the wire size on the ground wires I replaced.

A couple of months ago a buddy ask me to help him replace a burn wire on his '64 Plymouth. It looked like Flaflier's pictures. I had to remove all the tape under dash, patch, splice wires, added relays and extra circuits, etc. Took two days. The '64 Plymouth has a 30 amp fuse block. Thru the years Gene added A.C. and Halogen lights. To much for the old system.
Ah the fun of owning an old car.



Dwight

[flaflier]

Update:
I have redone the wiring, everything appears to work. I have physically replaced the distributor, and am now working on the wires.
Before I go to far, I need to connect the coil to the harness. My question is whether I need to jumper the ballast resistor, as my new setup (Petronix) doesn't need the resistor. I have the white wire (Coil +) hooked up, but with the ignition on, I am only getting .3V. I assume I either jumper the ballast resistor, or pull the +12 from the G/V wire of the ballast resistor and attach that to the + of the coil...

Thoughts?

Jim

[strictlypersonl]

0.3V seems much too low, even at the load side of the ballast resistor. Are you measuring across the ballast resistor, or between the wire and ground? (the correct way...)

Is there 12V at the G/V wire?

At any rate, you should connect the G/V wire directly to the Pertronix if they recommend full voltage.