Thread: 1956 Chevy 210 Handyman Wagon

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Yes, these will be crimped correctly AND soldered... I will work on rewiring the B/U and N/S switches tonight while I am waiting for the replacement parts to come in. I will run these micro switches thru relays I will put in the engine compartment. Keeps the high power from running thru the switch and simplifies wiring to the shifter.

Worked on wiring on this car the whole week. Started out for the Sloan Show last Saturday and the car was doing great until we got on the expressway. About 10 miles into the drive the car just quits. Dead to the world , no electrical power at all. Fuel pump isn't even running. We have it roll backed home AGAIN...
Sunday I dig into it. Pulled the battery and tray, pulled the starter and all of the starter/charge wires. The only thing that would shut down the entire system is a very hot 12V lead from the battery terminal on the starter to the fuse box. There is a 10ga wire with a fusible link so I replaced that with an 8ga. wire/fusible link.
Some of the stuff I found while pulling the wiring out.
A). Melted convolute tubing around the battery leads from the starter to the dash harness. The wires were very tight to the back corner of the pass. side cyl hd... This looked like it was getting pretty warm that close to the exhaust port.
B). The charge wire from the alternator ran in front of the engine, under the alt brkt, and then up over the intake manifold. I had to pry the convolute tubing off the heat riser on the intake. It had melted in place...
C). I pulled the temp sensor wire and found an "insulating washer", a fiber washer... under the ring terminal to sensor joint... Why would you want to "insulate" this connection? Just asking...
D). There was no dedicated frame ground (common practice on the tri-fives).
E). The body ground was a butt spliced 12ga wire.


This is a list of the changes made during the week.
1). Added a 12v distribution block to the firewall.
2). The above 8ga. wire routed from the starter battery terminal to the new 12v tap.
3). Shortened the 10ga. feed wire to the fuse block and routed it to the new tap.
4). Re-wired the alternator from a 1-wire to a true 3-wire. Ran 8ga. wire to the new 12v tap and routed a new sensor wire to the same tap.
5). Routed the alternator wire down to the frame rail and back to the firewall rather then over the engine.
6). Rebuilt the ground leads. Drilled and tapped a 5/16-18 hole on the top of the frame rail and routed a 2ga grd lead from the water pump, a 1/0 cable from the battery and a 4ga lead from the body to this bolt on the rail.
7). Pulled the cluster and replaced a bad LED turn signal lamp.
7a). During the LED swap I get the turn signal indicators working but they are backwards... I find the signal wires are reversed in the dash connector. Swap those to the correct pins and the indicators work correctly now.
8). Unplug the NS and B/U lamp harness from the switch down at the trans. Install a pair of relays under the dash and wire in new switches on the shifter. I have some adjusting to do on the NS switch but the car now starts every time and we have B/U lamps!
That was my week, how was yours?
Mark

Here a few pics of the work I did.
The new ground zero...



New 2ga. cable to the front of the engine.



New neg batt terminal and 1/0 grd cable. (I replaced the wing nut with a hex when the work was done.)



This was the body ground as I found it...



This is the new 4ga body ground.

Sounds like you had a great week. Can't wait till I can get back to the important projects.


Jack.

The 12v distribution point on the firewall.



Building the new 8ga. lead down to the starter. I made this a bit longer then the original so I could route it away from the cylinder head and header pipe. I use copper butt splice connectors and solder the joints.

Wrapped with self-fusing tape.

And then heat shrink.

Hanging the NS and B/U lamp relays under the dash. These are right behind the instrument cluster and easy to access with the cluster removed.



This is the 12v switched power lead for the back up lamps... As I found it. I cut it short right above the break and hard wired it into the relay. Did the same for the purple NS Switch wires and the green lead for the B/U lamps.

I wired the relays thru these two micro switches that attach to the shifter. I wired them as negative ground to switch them on. The switches are wired to a common ground on the shifter and have two wires that run up the relays.

All wired and tested. They work great and the car starts right up every time now...

Whoever owned the car before you was a fool.

Astro, I just installed some new Classic Instrument gauges. The oil and temp sending units had a small disc of insulated "fiber board" for lack of a better term.

I tossed it as it seemed to be to large and butt ugly imo.. and wondered why you 'd insulate this connection?

Great work! I will be rewiring my 72 soon and i'm not looking forward to buying all the supplies again.

Thanks Guys,
And Ryan, if you have to buy everything, do yourself a favor and get an AAW kit. EVERYTHING is included and they are much easier to install with the marked wire and instruction sheet.

Originally Posted by NTFDAY

Whoever owned the car before you was a fool.

Ohhh, you don't realize how EXACTLY correct you are!!! Wrapping up the work this weekend I get everything done, the car starts and runs, and all of the lights work. EXCEPT when I test the blinkers. They are backwards. Right indicator (in the dash) blinks when the left turn signal is on and vice-versa for the Left indicator. Did I mention I also replaced both LED's in the dash because one was burnt out. I couldn't find a matching one so I just replaced them both. I wired them correctly, left to left and right to right... Now they are blinking wrong... I check the cluster to dash harness connector and sure enough, the idiot had the wires crossed between connectors. I swapped the leads in the cluster connector and now they are correct... My god what an imbecile!

I finished adjusting the Neutral Safety Switch on the shifter tonight. The car is all set for a drive as soon as it dries out around here.
The blinkers work!
The back up lights work!
The neutral safety switch works!
The tail lamps work!
The headlights work!
The alternator likes being a three wire much better then a one wire.
And the chassis, engine and body grounds are all much happier...
Now, before I re-install the shifter cover I am building a set of cup holders for it...
Hopefully I'll have need for them in the near future!

In 1964 I went home, Dayton, Ohio, on leave from Camp Pendleton to pick up a sbc powered 36 Ford 5 window coupe. A couple of weeks later I'm sitting the barracks when a buddy runs in to tell me that the car's on fire. The clown that owned the car before me had put 39 tail lights under the trunk and must have wired them with every small piece of wire he could find. He twisted all the connections and taped it up and some of the tape fell off and the wires shorted and caused the fire. The rest of the wiring wasn't in much better shape so I rewired the car which was a lot of fun as that was before kits of any kind. It never caught on fire again.

Just to keep the timeline current on this thread.
We had the wagon out this past Saturday. Maiden voyage with the new wiring. Did a small local car show and had a good day. The car ran well, didn't leave us stranded and got a top 25 at the show!

The new wiring seems to have done the job. The car starts every time, the volt meter stays steady at 14 volts, even with the air on, and she runs down the road at about 170.
She does wander a bit going down the road so I think I will have the steering box checked out and get her aligned. Probably too much toe out so that needs to be addressed before I do too many trips with her.
Mark

After getting the wiring harness sorted out (rebuilt with bigger and better stuff!) the car starts and runs now and didn't leave us stranded when we went to a car show yesterday.
One thing it did need though was a set of cup holders. I built these out of some ABS sheet and PVC pipe. They are attached to the shifter console.

Developed a pattern using a cut up manila folder. Only one template is needed as I can just flip it over to make the left hand part.

Making the brackets out of 1/8th inch thick ABS sheet. This has a texture on the other side.

I cut the plastic out on my vertical bandsaw.

Using the heat gun on my soldering station I bent the plastic to match the angles on the shifter cover.

The heat gun runs at about 480 degrees when maxed out so it only took a few seconds to get the ABS hot enough to make nice bends.


Both pieces bent up and fit to the "cup holders".