This is going to be a multi-part posting, I'm about halfway through the wiring process. The wiring was not up to the standards that I hold and the car would not have been reliable in the condition it was in. The harness was new but numerous other things must be done at the same time a harness is put in, this is the difference between doing a job, and doing a job
right.
Let's start with the ignition switch: The main feed power from the rear of the car comes here and branches off to the headlight switch and fusebox.
This is the main power feed wire from the battery as it came to me:
Which attaches to one of these stupid piggyback connectors
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Onto the ignition switch.
I've already changed this power feed arrangement around but I don't have pictures of it yet, they will come later this week. Instead of piggybacking heavy amperage wires I made a 4 way soldered splice where the main power branches into 3 separate feeds- the ignition switch, headlight switch, and fusebox. You'll see later.
Here's the piggyback coming off the ignition switch, the left wire is the coil feed, the right wire feeds the fusebox. Yech.
This is the coil feed wire, the crimp terminal was actually loose and the wire could be pulled in and out of the terminal by about 1/16" . This would have caused an intermittent stall condition where the car shuts off on bumps if it was not corrected.
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On to the headlight switch. The same power feed comes here before going to the fuseblock, but it's important to remove and clean the HL switch before installing the new harness. Here are before and after pictures of the HLS when it goes for a ride in the blast cabinet. I also spray it with penetrating oil and blow it off thoroughly, you can see the remnants of the oil on the terminals. This helps prevent surface corrosion in the future.
From there the power goes to the fuseblock. I had already cleaned the terminals with my tiny wire wheel when I decided that wasn't good enough and it needed a ride in the blast cabinet also. Here are before and after pictures of that:
On to the wiper switch, once again it needed a bit of cleaning:
These were the wires attached to the wiper motor, and what I replaced them with:
This is a junction block for the turn signal switch, before and after blasting:
All of these corroded surfaces would have stacked up to create considerable voltage drop in every circuit on the car and when you have only 6v to start with you're already at a big disadvantage.
I've been wiring stuff a long time and specialized in that when I had the truck shop. In order to do a wiring job properly you must stock the proper supplies. Here are about half of my terminal trays, which are thousands of dollars worth of terminals. The heat shrink terminals are expensive, when I had the shop I bought them in bags of 1000 each because we used so many. I still like to keep plenty on hand so when I need a terminal in X size for X wire, I have it. I also can make battery cables and have the big long crimper than handles up to 4/0 cable.