Thread: Electricals - phew

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IC2, I have an electrical soldering "gun" but when I try to solder wires there is not enough heat, probably due to the length of the wire. I also have a smaller electrical iron that I used for circuit boards in my lab but it is intended to be low heat for protection of solid state chips so it is certainly not hot enough. I am surprised that the soldering gun will not solder the wires. What are you using? I bought a second heater for the garage, but this morning it was 26 F in the garage and even with two radiative heaters I decided to do some other clerical work today rather than plug on with my one-wire-per-day plan. Although there was the first frost of the winter this morning I hope to put on both heaters tomorrow and maybe in an hour or two I can get get some work done on the wiring.

Don shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Originally Posted by Don Shillady

IC2, I have an electrical soldering "gun" but when I try to solder wires there is not enough heat, probably due to the length of the wire. I also have a smaller electrical iron that I used for circuit boards in my lab but it is intended to be low heat for protection of solid state chips so it is certainly not hot enough. I am surprised that the soldering gun will not solder the wires. What are you using? I bought a second heater for the garage, but this morning it was 26 F in the garage and even with two radiative heaters I decided to do some other clerical work today rather than plug on with my one-wire-per-day plan. Although there was the first frost of the winter this morning I hope to put on both heaters tomorrow and maybe in an hour or two I can get get some work done on the wiring.

Don shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Don,
I have several soldering irons from the little electronics pencil size, a heavy duty gun and a 60 year old GE clunk that must weigh 2 pounds and makes the electric meter spin up when I plug it in. As far as the electronic board, I need to know where the missing green wire goes before I attempt any repairs. There is no wiring diagram for the innards of this module and since there was never a wire, no indication on any of the empty terminals. The two switches - those will be worked on later this morning, What a PITA!!!

I think VA was colder then here on Wed morning according to the weather map. We were at ~28*, but my garage was at 42*. By the time I ran a couple of errands and leaving both heaters on for about an hour, it was ~64* - (flannel) shirtsleeves temp. I shut one heater down and the other held 62* though the afternoon.

I have to poor boy everything, have never had a boughten harness or kit. I take a lot of wiring and connectors from parts cars so I have a good variety of colors and the good weather-pac connectors. I have never been very good at soldering so I like to use the un-insulated crimp connectors and terminals with heat shrink tubing and find it very suitable. I do use an old Thomas and Betts crimper that does a much better job than the combo striper/crimpers. I also design my own systems and use a NAPA application guide to find the component that does just what I want.
I personally like to use wire loom for my wires to run inside of, It makes a lot more factory looking job. The rubber lined metal holders are good. I also use the factory style plastic ones that snap in. I don't know where I got them but I had some zip ties with a mounting hole in the end too.
Zip ties vary greatly in quality and those cheap Allied ones from Sam/s or Costco are junk. If you can find 3M ones they are the best. Here is an item that you get what you pay for.

Originally Posted by willowbilly3

I have to poor boy everything, have never had a boughten harness or kit. I take a lot of wiring and connectors from parts cars so I have a good variety of colors and the good weather-pac connectors. I have never been very good at soldering so I like to use the un-insulated crimp connectors and terminals with heat shrink tubing and find it very suitable. I do use an old Thomas and Betts crimper that does a much better job than the combo striper/crimpers. I also design my own systems and use a NAPA application guide to find the component that does just what I want.
I personally like to use wire loom for my wires to run inside of, It makes a lot more factory looking job. The rubber lined metal holders are good. I also use the factory style plastic ones that snap in. I don't know where I got them but I had some zip ties with a mounting hole in the end too.
Zip ties vary greatly in quality and those cheap Allied ones from Sam/s or Costco are junk. If you can find 3M ones they are the best. Here is an item that you get what you pay for.

No problem with doing it that way - my biggest problem is the lack of good donor cars. I can't have them on my property. Then the local salvage yards with one exception don't allow people in the back - the old "insurance" BS. The one that will - he and I have chosen to no longer like each other, regardless of the fact that we were friends outside. He, a couple of times quoted a price, then when I pulled the part conveniently forgot how much and it went way up. The first time I paid, the second, I dropped the item in the yard and left - forever.

The AC wiring problems I have are Vintage Air quality problems on supplied pieces of their Gen ll Mini heat/cool control unit and will probably cost me ~$75 including shipping to fix if I can't convince them that they had shipped defective items

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Update ~1:30PM. I talked to Vintage Air. OOPS, they supplied the wrong wiring diagram with the original "kit" and for mine, there is no green wire - it's for defrost, which I don't have. They will be supplying 2 new switches for the control panel though I did temporarily solder my terminals back solidly together for check out

IC2, Just reporting in with some progress. The weather was pretty good today and it was 66 F in the garage so I did get some wiring done. The wire to the electric choke only required adding a push on clip and then I worked on adding ground wires to the tailights which are mounted on the fiberglass fenders. Threading in the tailight wires was a worry because the rear tires are big and I don't want to get into a situation where the tires rub the wires. Fortunately Henry Ford figured that out in 1929 by providing a back plate for the tailights (I got repro plates from Brattons in Md.) with a large bulging ridge in it for the wires so, if at all, the tires will rub on the smooth steel backing plate. I had to take the rear wheels off to drill a small hole through the side of the quarter panels for the wires but it was reassuring to find that the width of the 8" Maverick rear places the tires out away from the inner part of the body so that if the tire hits at all it will hit the protective steel backing plate instead of the wires. I might not have known about this except for my use of the original Ford manual for the Model A which shows the protective plate which was certainly needed for the 21" wheels on the original 1929 A. For once trying to follow the "restorod" trail was actually helpful. However I now realize why many roadsters have the tailights in the base of the body and not on the fender where large tires can rub the wires! Hey this was a "three wire day"! (I have been using "crimp only" connections so far; hope I don't regret that.)

Don Shillady
Retired SCeintistteen rodder

Hi Don - sounds like an early spring day yesterday in VA - we were here in the frozen tundra of the Upstate NY area had only mid fifties - but nice. Today isn't!!

Sounds like at least some progress. Never in my life did I anticipate that my wiring would take so long. It is a long and involved process, then factor in some "unforseens" and some part failures it just gets longer and longer. At least I don't have the 'glass body to contend with. I'm still waiting on the replacement switches from Vintage Air noted in my last post here, but in essence have my wiring 95% done with only the cowl lamps and under dash and trunk light left. I did add a 'power point' after you mentioned your addition

I've seen those backing plates that Bratton's sells - they do a good job of protecting and turning the wires. I'm using Pontiac LED repro's bolted through the lower body panel below the trunk lid so I don't have those kinds of problems. I originally started out with '32 lights that mount on the ends of the spreader bar - but on a '31, even with the '32 gas tank really didn't look right.

Heating your garage - take a look here: http://www.mrheater.com/productdetai...catid=42&id=21

I have 2 of these and one will move the temp in my 24x30 garage to the mid fifties on a 25* day, two, mid 60's in about an hour. I have my garage again partitioned off (yesterday's accomplishment beyond my honey-do's) and based on last year will move the 12X30 bay easily into the 60's. I do have a CO monitor for safety's sake.

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

I was able to get a warmer day, Xmas past and finally get the wiring completed for the air and heat system with the new switches provided by Vintage. I do have to thank them as there was no reason except for good customer service to provide me with $25 worth of way out of warranty parts. The wiring is now clamped to the floorboards, unfortunately taped rather then wire tied as they were planned to be left - if I have a wire problem or need more run, the failed will just have to be cut off and left in place and new ones run. A BIG lesson learned - wire before you paint so those pesky snarls can be hidden rather then become a nightmare for the upholsterer