all right all cars have em,whether new or rat rod. post up what you have been through in your worst wiring nightmares. right now i am installing a very complex alarm system, plus it has a built in remote control system for all kinds of stuff. i'm using every function on it,on top of that i am cleaning up a complex harness i had installed behind the dash years ago, actually rebuilding it from scratch. and wiring the voice warning system in the car,which is complex enough. so at the moment my car looks like a wiring harness exploded. on top of all this,the oil line behind the dash that goes to the gauge,burst. so i need to pulll the dash to clean out all the oil mess. on my car thats a nightmare. also installing power door locks for the alarm. the remote system,the stereo,the alarm,and the voice warning system are all interconnected with each other also. painless wiring isn't gonna be able to help me here. lol. i've been doing this kind of stuff since i was 15 and i'm 35 now,so it will get done,and it will all be done right,into nice neat harnesses,but right now i have a headache tylenol couldn't touch. . tomorrow i'm going to go to the yard and pull some harnesses to take apart for new harnesses. with the price of copper wire today, you can take apart late model harnesses that have high quality wire,and build your own for almost nothing. anyway post up some pics of your wiring messes. one of the relay boards that controls some functions. what my bench looks like at the moment.
One Night while i was eating Black Beauty's I had a nightmare of.... Ohh Wait.... Wrong kind of Wires !!!
I'm wondering if maybe you have too much junk on your car. You might not need a voice warning system unless you are 8000 feet in the weather with your hands full trying to keep the ball centered...
this one tells you if your doors are open,your lights are left on, brake is on, or you are about to run out of gas.ll i put it on there,because i have an eighties car, and that was big back then,came from an 82 datsun z car, it's neat to me because it wasn't on a chip,it actually has a small record inside of the module, so when it plays a voice warning, it locates the track on the record and plays it through the built in amplifier on the board. i just have a soft spot for interesting old mechanisms like that. when i'm all done there won't be a wire visible anywhere. i'm very ticky about my harnesses. no crimp connectors, except for a few ring connectors, all solder and heat shrink,and i use harness plugs for everything. i always figure the best wiring jobs are those no one ever sees.
I worked on a car, I think it was a chevy II, all of the wiring was done in red, needless to say, I ripped all of it out and redid it correctly. The car came in with a wiring problem, imagine that!
When I bought this 34 pickup I didnt check it out at all.So,when I removed the carpet on the inside of the firewall there was a clear plexigl*** panel I removed it and this is what I found!
i bought a 48 chevy one time, and i pulled 100 feet of wire out from under the dash and hood, that went to nothing. pulled another 50 feet of wire out from under the rear seat and trunk that also went to nothing. the wires that were actually being used were loaded with **** connectors and scotch locks. the tail light wiring was made from extension cord wire. needless to say, the whole car got re-wired.
In a word.... LUCAS! Good ol' English car electricals, I believe it stands for... Left Us Cold And Stranded. Cheers, Glen.
Granted, my car was an old race car when I bought it, and it appeared to be kinda thrown together. I pulled all the wiring out in order to re-wire the car for street use. This was all the wiring that I pulled out of the car:
Kinda OT, but here's a couple that I'm working on right now. The first is a 63 Chevy II that a customer just bought and brought it in for a couple of hours of tweaking and tuning. So far, it's been here about a month and I've replaced the engine, gone thru the brakes, rerun the fuel lines and now I'm working on the wiring. The car has new tin work in it, but they left a LOT of sharp edges that rub thru the wires and they were also a little free with the **** connectors. I'm also wiring up MSD boxes, two stage rev limiters, etc. I almost forgot about the rats nest of wires under the car that was just stuffed above the front u-joint. The second is a 79 Chevy pickup that's been here way to long. It was first set up for a 350 throttlebody. Then they started putting a throttle body 454 in it and gave up. A friend bought it and brought it here to finish. I had to rewire the fuel pumps (dual tanks), change all of the connectors on the wiring looms, install and wire oxygen sensors and figure out why I couldn't get fire to anything. I got to digging around and found a Viper Alarm/Remote Start system that my customer didn't even know it had. He wants to keep it, so I've got to wire around it to get everything going and then let him take it to an "authorized" Viper tech to get that part of it straightened out.
Real hot rods need wires to the starter, ignition, headlights and taillights, and maybe a horn. Gas gauge if you're getting fancy. Should have no need for voice warning systems.
When you get thru with all the bell and whistles you wont be Lostforawhile youll be Lostforever.....Ha.
This might be a lil O/T but on my chevy I went crazy for a while original starter was so so I bought one from a rebuilder heavy duty or so they said, lasted less than a year about 500 miles as the car is driven. so I bought some wedder's cable new ends etc. Didn't install it yet. Thought it (again) might be the starter went a local parts store (good guy) here try this a Delco Remy factory rebuilt starter lasted about 2 weeks all the starters started ok when cold put a few miles on it and they wouldn't spin at 10 RPMS . Brought the starter back to my friend got full refund on it and said try this gear reduction starter. Its been 2 yrs now and not one problem ,seems a lot of rebuilt stuff is just junk.
I'm in the process of rewiring a 57 porsche speedster for work right now. Not too complicated, but finding the 6volt horn relay and the optional "horn ring light flasher relay" has been a nightmare.
All that **** sounds like a KNIGHT RIDER POS. The first thing you should do is get that **** organized using ty-wraps and some of that flexible wireloom stuff. Then you might also want to make a wiring diagram. Then maybe you can do troubleshooting. If that thing has all those things, maybe it can talk to you and tell you what is wrong, but then again it might say "I don't feel well, I am not taking you to work today!"
haha,i really don't have that many compared to a lot of cars, the alarm is pretty important today because of all the low IQ crackheads and tweekers running around, would steal your car for a quarter in the ashtray. shut down the starter and the fuel system and you'll outsmart most of them. i still have manual windows and the simple two lever heat and ventilation system. all mechanical, i could convert to power windows and swap out everything behind the dash to push****on controls pretty easy,but i don't have a reason to,nor do i want to. i installed a factory cruise system, not because i'm being lazy, but because on any kind of drive over 200 miles, my knee will start killing me because of the angle of my foot on the gas pedal. most of the time don't even like to use it. not a big fan of cruise. but as i get older becomes needed. that was a wiring nightmare in itself, even thought it was done from optional factory parts.
yea when i'm done it will all be organized neatly into harnesses. and i do have a good wiring diagram,as a matter of fact i have a book now with what each connector plug is,and what each pin goes to. oh i can shut the voice off if i want too,i just like it because not too many of those boxes from 28 years ago still work.
PO spliced 3 or 4 pieces of wire together to get from the coil to the distributor...about 10" away. Not like that's important enough to use a new wire on, right? It was OK though, because he used electrical tape...or at least there was some on there at one time 'cause you could see the black adhesive goo left over where it melted off from the engine heat. The rest of the wiring repairs on the car were about the same quality.
i have a 66 tbird with sequential taillights that dont work it seems to defy all logic also have a jaguar and the wiring resembles a klingon battlecruiser i do feel your pain
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