Wiring Kits

[troutstreamnm]

Hello Everyone,
It's been a while since I last visited the site and have been trying to catch up.  I'm restoring my 71 Challenger and plan on doing a complete rewire while it's apart.  I'm at a loss as to which wiring kit to use.  Currently the Painless 12-circuit and the Ron Francis kits both look good to me.  Anyone have any comments or preferences for this job?  Thanks.

Troutstreamnm

[HemiDog]

I have a Painless generic muscle car 18 circuit kit but haven't installed it yet.  It will be some work, but every wire is clearly labeled.  It will require the reuse of old light sockets too.  I went with it because I plan on doing some mods to incorporate some relays for certain items.  The new kit that is made for Mopars I can't comment on.  Not sure if the sockets are there.

[gomopar440]

I've used Painless kits before and they seemed ok to me. You do have to connect all the kit wires to the stock plugs and connectors though so they're not a direct bolt in type deal. Someone mentioned this place to me for a source to get OEM type harneses (sp?) http://www.wiringharness.com/. I've never tried them so I can't say how they are from personal experience. My brother put an EZ Wiring, EZ-21 kit http://www.ezwiring.com/ in his 42 Dodge panel truck and liked it a lot. It's also the cheapest kit I've found anywhere at about $160 for the EZ-21. The wires are labelled with the ciruit name every few inches to keep tracing the wires simple. I also got the EZ-21 kit for my Challenger but haven't had a chance to install it yet. It looks comparable to the Painless kits quality wise but costs less than half of what the Painless kits do.

[crcarch]

I installed the Ron Francis kit.   
Quality of materials is outstanding with all wires marked, but reference/instruction materials are a joke.  Few diagrams and general descriptions only.  Great if it's a GM, but not so good for us and the support staff admittedly knows little about Mopars. I shorted out my electronic ignition module listening to their direction. Overall the kit required a lot of splicing and reuse of existing terminations (switches, sockets, etc.) to make all the factory connections. Fusebox is huge and required a custom bracket to hang it. Of course, it does have plenty of room for expansion. It took me a solid 4-weeks worth of spare time and weekends to get it installed.  Probably 2/3 of that time was spent simply trying to figure everything out using factory wiring diagrams and studying the existing wiring harness.

If I hadn't had a complete existing wiring harness or the factory wiring diagrams, I could not have rewired my car with the Ron Francis kit.  My advice is to look elsewhere.

[gomopar440]

That reminds me about a problem I had with Painless that I had almost forgotten about. The universal Painless kit I installed in my Power Wagon had an error in the supplied diagram. Following their diagram exactly had me unknowingly grounding out the voltage regulator. When I first tried to fire it up, the unregulated voltage fried three of my brand new AutoMeter guages. After troubleshooting the problem and locating the extra ground wire, I contacted Painless to let them know about the error in the diagram. Their reply was something to the effect of "wow, that's too bad". I still to this day don't know if they ever updated their diagrams and I never got them to cover the guages that got burned up either.

As far as craftsmanship goes, the Painless kit was nice though. Just not any better than the EZ kit that costs half as much.

[Cuda Cody]

I had to answer the same question just a few months ago.  I asked around and got serveral experts opinions.  After it was all said and done, I went with http://www.wiringharness.com/

I would highly advice you call and talk to Tom (562-926-9552).  I got his name and phone orginaly from Joe on this board.  Tell him that you got his name from Cody or Joe from the Cuda-Challenger board.

[dawgs 73]

If you check, M&H won't sell mopar directly. They have, at least from what I was told, a contract with Year One and they are only sold through Y1. With that being said, I called M&H after I bought the harness form my '73 Cuda from Y1, and asked Tom about the melt down issues with the voltmeter. He had a fix, and I sent mine back to him for that change. Tom was very nice and more than helpful with this so I have nothing but nice to say about M&H and their product. Expensive, but nice.................

[Chryco Psycho]

if it matters the Painless kit is based on GM design , wire colors etc
Haywire also makes a GM based kit

[troutstreamnm]

Appreciate the input folks    This does not look like it will be an easy job regardless of the manufacturer.  Thanks for the warning on the Ron Francis kit, I was leaning that direction until reading this thread.

[rallyechall]

You may also have the option of having your existing harness rebuilt from http://evanswiring.tripod.com/ . I inquired about dash harnesses though he does not sell them. He did mention that he could rebuild my existing harness using the original bulkhead etc. It the componants are good why not just replace the wiring unless you wish to go to the blade type fuses. I am satisfied with the other harnesses I had purchased from him. Good Luck

[Chryco Psycho]

I can recommend Evans also

[ShelbyDogg]

If that Evans is Bill and Rose Evans, They are the ones that supplied 2 harnesses to 2 of my friends where the wires were crossed and I had to fix them.

[Chryco Psycho]

yes Bill Evans
still easier to fix than the painless system , did you let them know Shelby?

[ShelbyDogg]

No, I didn't tell them.  It's one of those things that you rmember, tell others, then remember not to use them yourself.

The first instance was a '70 Challenger  T/A rear tailight harness. there are 4 tailights with 2 wires each socket. 2 of the wires in 2 of the sockets were reversed!  Easy fix in 5 minutes once I was called but the poor guy spent a day trying to figure it out.

The second instance were the 2 backup light wires on a 4-sp tranny harness on a '70 440 6-pK Cuda. Only 2 wires in this harness from the bulkhead connector to the tranny, with a connector to the dash's reverse light. They were reversed with the dash light connected to the hot side.  You would think with a 2 wire connector that they could get it right. 

[Chryco Psycho]

other wise there products are good & reasonable price , probably someone was bored to death assembling them