Wiring of your car.....????

[John Poling]

Paul,
Wiring is a cinch!!! I started with a universal Painless harness and modified it heavily from there. The single biggest problem with wiring is grounding, improper grounding is the most common problem with those so called electrical system "Gremlins". Most of it is common sense to me (but I am an electrical systems engineer at a large automotive OEM), the best thing for grounding an electrical system properly is to have as few grounding points as possible (one point is the best and is the way I set mine up). My suggestion would be to run at least a "0" gauge cable for your main ground terminal on the battery to your frame making sure that you have completely removed all foriegn matter first(paint, grease, rust etc...) use as large of a terminal end (frame side of cable) as you can find in your required length. From there figure out where you can locate a point where you could mount a junction block stud box that would be somewhere in the middle of all your componants. Run a single 8 or 10 gauge wire from the frame (pay attention to your prep work on the frame) to the block and use as large of eyelet you can and install it to your ground stud first. From that point, run all of your grounding wires to this single point not installing any more than 6-8 wires to each stud, if you need more grounds than this add another stud box running another 8 or 10 gauge wire from the frame to each additional ground block. Keep in mind that it will be easier to troubleshoot your system if you keep certain systems tied together (engine circuits togehther, lighting systems together, and dash wiring together) that way you can all but eliminate ground issues if only one item is acting up but not others that are tied to the same point. Don't forget to run a large ground strap between your engine block and the frame preferrably using the same ground stud on the frame that you used for the rest of your systems.

Spend a little bit ($10-$20) to save yourself from having nightmares later and buy a quality crimper from Radio Shack or someplace like that to do all of your crimping operations. A terminal that has been crimped using a cheapy crimper will work for a while but over time will fail long before the same crimp done using a quality crimper.

After you have bolted your grounding points to the frame for the last time, apply some type of sealing grease or compound to seal up the whole area of the grounding point, get sloppy if you need to but make sure that you have sealed the whole point so that contaminants of any kind can't get to the actual metal of the joint.

Sorry for the lecture but I wanted to get my point accross about how important grounding circuits are to the overal performance of a vehicles electrical system.

If you or anyone has any further questions of Electrical systems, just ask by posting here and I will try to answer to the best of my knowledge.

John