- Jun 12, 2014
- 12,920
- 32,558
Founding Member
It was mostly a simple matter from there to start hooking up the individual wires to the switches, lights, etc. Every single wire in the harness is labeled every foot or so with arrows pointing to what that wire is supposed to connect to.
So for the light switch for instance all the wires are in one bundle and you just follow the schematic to connect the right wire to the right terminal. Hot wire in, main headlight wire out, front park light wire out, rear park light wire out, dome light wire out, and dimmer wire out which connects to the gauges. Easy peezy.
It takes a little effort to keep it from becoming a rats nest again but just a little forethought and effort and you can keep it neat. Most of the dash switches are hooked up and its looking a little busy, but after I zip tie everything together it'll look a lot neater. Plus I'll strain relieve the bundles so they don't break from bouncing around down the road, which is far more important in a race car but still something to do on any vehicle.
Not every switch is new or easy to hook up. This is the reverse light switch, which is mounted on the shifter on the dash. When the shifter is in the reverse position, it makes the switch which turns on the reverse lights. As you can see, one of the wires broke off the housing. If you can find this switch online, expect to pay well over 100 bucks for it (after all its over 50 years old). So I set out to fix this one.
I took the switch apart and cleaned everything inside first to make sure it would work after I reattached that wire. 3 small springs and a few tiny contacts etc. It took a minute to figure out how it was supposed to work, but everything inside seems like it'll last a while longer at least. Next I soldered the broken wire back on to the post that sticks through the housing. The reason it broke off in the first place is due to the wire bouncing around and working that little connection until it finally broke, which is why you do the strain relieving I mentioned earlier. After I finished that I tried to rivet the switch housing back together but there was no way, and some of the tabs on the metal part of the switch housing had broken off as well. So I put a big zip tie around everything to hold it together, then I mixed up some epoxy and basically "potted" the whole assembly. This not only holds the housing together but adds a ton of strength to the wire connections.
The tail lights were a similar story, with the bulb housings being very corroded and not worth cleaning up. I bought a couple bulb housings on amazon for 7 bucks and made a little bracket to mount them to the tail light bases. You can see the old housing on the bench next to the modified new base.
So for the light switch for instance all the wires are in one bundle and you just follow the schematic to connect the right wire to the right terminal. Hot wire in, main headlight wire out, front park light wire out, rear park light wire out, dome light wire out, and dimmer wire out which connects to the gauges. Easy peezy.
It takes a little effort to keep it from becoming a rats nest again but just a little forethought and effort and you can keep it neat. Most of the dash switches are hooked up and its looking a little busy, but after I zip tie everything together it'll look a lot neater. Plus I'll strain relieve the bundles so they don't break from bouncing around down the road, which is far more important in a race car but still something to do on any vehicle.
Not every switch is new or easy to hook up. This is the reverse light switch, which is mounted on the shifter on the dash. When the shifter is in the reverse position, it makes the switch which turns on the reverse lights. As you can see, one of the wires broke off the housing. If you can find this switch online, expect to pay well over 100 bucks for it (after all its over 50 years old). So I set out to fix this one.
I took the switch apart and cleaned everything inside first to make sure it would work after I reattached that wire. 3 small springs and a few tiny contacts etc. It took a minute to figure out how it was supposed to work, but everything inside seems like it'll last a while longer at least. Next I soldered the broken wire back on to the post that sticks through the housing. The reason it broke off in the first place is due to the wire bouncing around and working that little connection until it finally broke, which is why you do the strain relieving I mentioned earlier. After I finished that I tried to rivet the switch housing back together but there was no way, and some of the tabs on the metal part of the switch housing had broken off as well. So I put a big zip tie around everything to hold it together, then I mixed up some epoxy and basically "potted" the whole assembly. This not only holds the housing together but adds a ton of strength to the wire connections.
The tail lights were a similar story, with the bulb housings being very corroded and not worth cleaning up. I bought a couple bulb housings on amazon for 7 bucks and made a little bracket to mount them to the tail light bases. You can see the old housing on the bench next to the modified new base.
