I keep telling myself to make smaller more frequent updates but it never seems to work out…..So over the next few days I’m going to try and catch up on all these posts to where I’m at with the car now. Basically I’ve been working every weekend on the wiring. Its hard to show any progress via pictures, but here’s my attempt. Here’s the huge bundle of wires that you start with (this is a Painless 12 circuit universal harness) once you mount the fuse box.
After grouping various signals and beginning the routing there are now multiple smaller groups.
Finally only a handful of wires remain.
If I ever have the time I’d like to do a whole separate write up in the Electrical section on my lessons learned on the Painless wiring install, but for now I’ll try to capture some of the things I learned in this thread. I had to go on company travel for a week so the first thing I did was spend the 5 hours on the plane comparing the Painless instructions to the factory service manual to make sure I understood what signal did what. It was important because I’m re-using the headlight switch, dimmer switch, wiper switch, etc.
Anyway I started with the tail lights because I figured that was the easiest. I ran all the wires in the stock location including a wire for a 3rd brake light that I’ll eventually mount on the rear package tray. I’m using red LED bulbs for the tail lights from LEDtronics. Eventually I’d like to make custom LED lights but these will work for now. The bulbs from LEDtronics are a lot more expensive then the typical eBay LED bulbs but these are the ones that Mopar Action magazine tested and found to be the brightest. I’m also running LED bulbs in the back up lights, side marker lights, and the license plate light. I used new side marker sockets from Rock Auto, but reused the stock tail light sockets. You can’t avoid butt splices but I didn’t want to just connect the stock old socket wiring to the Painless wires with butt splices. So after searching for a while I finally found a place that just sold the little brass buttons that go in to the socket. This allowed me to run the Painless wires effectively right to the bulbs. Here’s what they looked like.
This is a link to where I bought them however they don’t seem to carry the same style that I used.
http://www.repairconnector.com/products/Lamp-Socket-Brass-Terminal-Contact-Replacement-Repair-Connector.htmlThe next thing I ran in to was the ground lug on the tail lights are a 0.187 size terminal not the typical 0.250 terminal. So I had to order some of those. In this picture you can see I just ran the ground wires extra long while I waited for the terminals.
I used a combination of wire loom from wirecare.com and non-adhesive vinyl harness wrap to protect the wires.
One interesting thing about the Painless universal kit is it doesn’t have any wire for the back up lights. The TKO-600 has a backup light switch that is a simple switch that is closed when the transmission is in reverse. So I just needed to get power to the switch and from there to the backup lights. However, the Painless harness has an Electric Choke wire that’s switched +12V that I had no use for, so it was easy enough to route that to the transmission switch and from there run a new wire all the way back to the back up lights.
In the dash, since I’m reusing the stock switches, I pulled the terminals from the stock connectors and reused the plastic body of the connector. From there I ran the wires I needed and put on new terminals that seat in to the connector body. These are the style of terminals that you need for the connector bodies (I bought a lot of the electrical supplies from Del City, but you can get these at a lot of different places).
http://www.delcity.net/store/female-quick-connector-terminals/p_9291.a_1You also need this style of crimp tool to properly fold the tangs over to hold the wire. I have a generic multi-crimp tool that has the proper style of teeth, however I also put a little solder on them to make sure they aren’t going anywhere.
http://www.amazon.com/Delphi-Packard-Five-cavity-Wide-range-Crimping/dp/B003MWJ6SA/ref=sr_1_34?ie=UTF8&qid=1305510727&sr=8-34I couldn’t avoid butt connectors altogether so when I had to use them I used un-insulated seamless butt connectors that look like this (I bought mine on eBay)
http://www.delcity.net/cartviewitem?item=242005&search=yThe seamless means you don’t have to worry about the seam splitting open if you don’t have the crimper die in the right location, which is important when you’re on your back under the dash. I always cover them with adhesive lined heat shrink (I bought a nice kit for $13 on eBay that’s enough for the whole car). The adhesive lined heat shrink actually oozes out the adhesive at the very ends which effectively makes them water proof. You can see the clear adhesive on the end in this picture.
Usually when I had to use butt connectors it was because I had to join 2 wires to 1. In those cases, I found these “step down” butt connectors very useful. For example, I had 1 parking light feed wire that I had to connect both to the side marker light and the parking light.
http://www.delcity.net/cartviewitem?item=222115&search=yThat’s it for now. I’ll try to post another update tomorrow.
Travis
72 Cuda
