Technical Rebel Wire Harness diagrams and wiring info

I've always wondered why the fuck everything has to be 'GM friendly' when Fords make up such a huge part of the hobby? It's not like Ford is an orphan.

 

Years ago I met the owner of Rebel Wire at a Cleveland, Tn cruise in. I mentioned to him I had a fuse block I would like to use but would love to buy a kit sans the fuse block itself. He had me email the circuits I needed and sold me the harness itself at a very fair price.

You will not find a more customer friendly company than Rebel Wire. I have not forgotten how they treated me and I am pleased to have the opportunity to mention it here.

John

 

I'd like to address the Ford, GM, Mopar issue. Because I'm a Ford guy myself, as well as Studebaker, VW, GM... Let me ask you guys this question. What makes a kit GM or Ford? Besides the colors? I get this all the time when I tell someone to put a Ford solenoid on their car and they don't want to put it on because it's Ford. Ford didn't build it, they just used it, just like everyone else. It's just a heavy duty relay, and if that's what you need then that's what you need.

Let's take our headlight switch bundle of wires: Headlight switch power, dimmer power, park lights, tail lights, dash lights . I'm going to connect them to a Ford switch. Ford normally used the letters B (battery) P (park lights) (R) tail lights (H) dimmer power (I)instrument lights. So you just connect the wires accordingly. The wires don't know what you're doing with them, you're telling them what to do by what switch you use.


Why can't I wire all these switches with the same harness? Know your parts guys, that's the best thing you can do. While I'm on Ford and GM headlight switches, the main difference comes in with the dome light wiring. While GM switches send a ground to turn on the dome light, Ford switches send a hot. That's why GM used self grounding jamb switches and Ford used insulated 2 wire switches.
If you guys want to wire cars, we can help. I'm a Ford guy at heart, just ask Ryno when he was wiring the Galaxie or the Continental, but learning about all this stuff in general and not one specific make or model has made it so much easier. Especially when a guy calls and he has a GM style switch and a Ford one wire dome light and I know it's not going to work together--unless you put in a relay to switch the ground signal from the switch to a hot signal for the dome light, haha! But anyway, there it is for now.

 

I had a guy one time ask for a wiring kit for a Ford with a GM engine conversion. I said what do you mean? He had a SBC in his Ford and needed the wiring for a GM engine. I told him that the coil wire still went to the coil, solenoid wire to the solenoid, engine sender wires to the senders... We get stuck on makes and models and it hinders us from building some really cool stuff. If I had a really cool headlight switch, ignition switch, turn signal switch laying around, you think I'm not going to use it because it's one brand or the other? Our hot rodding forefathers didn't do that. They used what they had, or what looked "right" and made it work

 

I used a Kwik Wire harness in my Ford with the Chevy engine. They sold me their 2nd Gen GM 14-circuit harness and the only change was I got a set of Ford steering column plugs with it. Colors didn't mean squat since all my column wiring had the stripes worn off them.

What is cool in a big way is that you have to wrap your head around doing the wiring per the kit instructions. My OG Ford dome light had 1 wire, the socket body was the ground. The harness supplied 2 wires for the dome light. I got a light socket with a black and white leads, had to make up a bracket to hold the bulb/socket to the roof. Used a little JB Weld to hold my fabbed bracket to the socket body.

Gauge power and gauge lights are powered by a single wire each, so I made up a bracket to hold 2 barrier strips under the dash. This is a Thomas Betts product and I used their jumpers to make it all common.

The best thing I did was to make up a harness board with finishing nails to route the wires. Used the steering column as one main leg and broke out the rest to either side of it. One thing I noticed that with an aftermarket harness you lose some redundancy that is more evident in newer cars, which is okay on a '59 Ford with no accessories. I took my time with it and I had 1 mis-wire at one of the taillights, 1 solder sleeve at the ignition switch that failed after a few months. But that was my fault.

 

in 2010 when I was building my 41 ford p/u , I called and ordered a rebel kit. not only did rebel43 take the call, he also asked what I was building and what acc I would be running. he could have took my money for the bigger unit but instead told me all I needed was the 9-3 saved me money and gave me the discount also pretty stand up guy I think Tom

 

Speaking of wiring Fords, here's a couple pics of a late 60's early 70's Ford wiper switch connector. Reusing the old connector, taking out the old terminal and plugging in a new power wire

 

Hi Ford guy here
I remember some years ago when my dad was looking for a harness for his Ford they (not sure who) specified a particular year range to use Ford steering columns. Do you know what years that would be?

 

I really don't know what they would have been talking about. I just go with whatever someone has in their car/truck. Some companies build a "factory fit" kit, but it's made to work with whatever connectors they used for the kit. Ours are universal and will work with just about any setup, you just reuse your old connectors, or add in something else. When wiring, the only thing that really matters on columns/turn signal switches is that the switch matches the rear lighting setup. Mostly if you run dual filament rear bulbs, that your switch has a brake light input wire (because your turn signal switch sorts out brake lights from turn signals). I've used our kits with just about any combination of switches, lights, etc you can think of.

Here's a picture of a late 70's Ford column I just fixed the connector on for a friend of ours. I just used a male and female 9 way Molex connector. When I rewire his truck I'll put the other side on the harness. It was very close to the original connector, but now this truck is a big block, disc brake, power steering... so who cares about original connectors at this point?

 

While we're on Ford Column wiring, here's some for you guys. I believe this was on a 56 Ford. I think we worked it out with a meter because some tracers were gone. I told you I was a Ford guy at heart

 

Before I put the new connector on that later model column up above, I bench tested it, because neither I nor my buddy knew about it. Here's a link to a video of me testing the column wiring
Granted, I know a little of my Ford wiring, so I knew what it should be doing, which was my flasher wire, brake wire, etc. But if you do your homework, you'll know it too. All that information is available, and we're here if you get stuck!

 

I used a rebel harness I got from @cball and when I couldn't figure out how to get my turn signals up and running I gave a call to the number on the instructions for technical help. To my utter amazement a person picked up the line and answered my question. I ended up having to use a trailer light conversion harness like the one below to get everything working properly due to my specific configuration. I'll definitely be using Rebel again. Thanks.

 

You pyromaniacs out there want to see the difference between cheap Chinese wire and good old American made wire? I'll probably ruffle some feathers with this
https://www.instagram.com/p/BmljMvRA_tY/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=2073724312639783

 

I told you guys earlier about using a simple test light to find a bad ground. Here's a link to a video of it. Just using an old painted/rusty horn button as my ground. Something to simulate a bad ground, showing how it will light up the test light.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=2090527054292842

 

I installed a 9-3 in my Shoebox Ford in '11. Still going strong. It's so easy to do, even I did it!

 

Hello Rebel 43,
This is the guy out of Murfreesboro that follows all the tech posts on Facebook. Man I love It. Having a 55' F100 with a 302 and 83' model Ford Van column I am loving this. Keep it coming. Definitely following.

 

Just finished reading the thread. Was happy to see the pyromaniac's test of the wire jacket. That has always been a pet peeve of mine. Most of the parts store wire around here has a hard exterior jacket that doesn't want to bend around sharp corners, and just doesn't feel good like most of the good old factory wiring. For instance, I once owned a 61 Ford truck, that I had to do some wiring on circa 1985. The wiring on the truck was more than a couple decades old, but it was still nice and soft and pliable as when it was installed originally.
Also, my first rewire was a 69 Mini Cooper S. I tore out ALL of Father Lucas's stuff, and rewired it from scratch from an article in a rod magazine. I did re-use the nice soft plastic push on insulators though. I took off all the hard plastic insulator ends from the metal part of the terminal, slid the soft plastic see through ends that British Leyland supplied originally, then lightly crimped the terminal, then soldered it together. Never had a minute's trouble with any of it.
Sure would like to know where I could get more of those soft clear push on insulators that Britsh Leyland used back in the day.
Thanks for posting this thread. I'll be needing a few harnesses in the future.

 

Hey, glad it’s helping someone out. I’m better with tech than social media, so I’m still figuring out how to get all the information out there. If there’s ever anything specific you need just let us know

 

Here's a little video of how your basic headlight system works. GM, Ford, Mopar, 6v, 12v, doesn't really matter in this case. It's just the headlight switch powering the floor dimmer (or column dimmer) and the dimmer switch powering the high and low beams. I was just using a little battery charger as my power source

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=2067412883270926

 

I don't know how many of you guys are running LED's, but here's a little video showing the relation of LED's and incandescent bulbs to your flasher. I'm only changing the flasher in this video, not the wiring. So changing out the flasher is what's changing the flash rate. Most companies selling LED's (light emitting diodes) don't tell you about this.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1865827533512058

 

This thread is an awesome idea. I'm not even wiring anything right now, and I still have learned some stuff today. Many thanks for supporting the guys that support your trade.

BTW... one of your harnesses was put in the Uni in my avatar about 4 years ago. It has been completely trouble free!

 

Thank you I will. Thank you for your generous sharing of your talent.

 

Nice! Just trying to spread some little tricks and tips around. I'm sure I'm not doing everything right and up to everyone's standards, but it works for me, and I like helping people out. I'm still learning as I go like everyone else. So if I post a couple things and save some headaches, it's been worth it.

 

Another little tip with LED's, since they are diodes, they are directional. Meaning that the hot has to be hot and the ground has to be ground. Unlike an incandescent bulb, that will work either way

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=2070528899625991

 

An easy way to test your dual filament bulbs. To find out which wire is the dim (running light) and which is the bright (turn signal/brake-in rear). Using a little 9v battery. 9v is enough to light it up and tell. The car battery or a Power Probe are nice too. This comes in handy when you buy some replacement sockets an the wires are all black! Just put some bulbs in, power them up, and label the wires "bright and dim" "tail and turn" whatever

 

Anyone curious about ignition wiring, or how and when they need a ballast resistor? The old coils, even though they were in a 12v system, were made to run off of 8-9v, so you used the ballast resistor to step it down. So really when or if you need one depends on what type of coil you're using.

You could also run the exact same setup, using an internally regulated coil (an E40 BWD part I think) and take out the resistor. The I post on the solenoid sent a full 12v to the coil, only when cranking, to help it fire up, then once running it ran off of the resisted voltage. The GM setup could also do this with the extra R post on the solenoid. I know all this stuff is pretty random, but maybe you guys can save what you need as we go. I've kinda got a lot rolling around in my head!

 

Speaking of Ignition/cranking, here's a 60's GM switch with IGN1 and IGN2 (which a lot of Mopar setups used as well). IGN2 was hot in the Start position and sent out a full 12v to help it fire up, then it ran off of IGN 1, which was only hot in the Run position. From what I've seen this IGN 1 and IGN 2 setup were pretty common in their function, so when you see them on a switch or diagram, you'll know what they do

 

Meaningful convo when your saying he doesn’t use the correct stuff, and you could do it better, but your retired and don’t feel like it....i don’t think he’s blowing you off, he’s just not going to waste the time to defend his great product to someone whom is already against it. That doesn’t make any sense. It’s the inter net man, your intitled to your options, but it’s time to move on. Quit being a dick and go build something.

 

Well, it's not, but it easily could be. And I'm not trying to be a dick, but Rebel (and pretty much all the other harness manufacturers) are presenting these as a 'one size fit all' solution and is depending on the general ignorance level of most customers to buy into that.

Electricity is interesting stuff. I've seen horrible crap work flawlessly for years... until it doesn't and it burns your car/home/business to the ground. I've also seen marginal installs that 'generally' work, but have 'issues', like premature switch/relay failures, burned connections, dim lights, etc. All things that are easily addressed in the original installation if a modicum of care is used.

 

Is there audio in the videos? It would be helpful to us clueless ones to know what is going on and why. Bob