So my girlfriend is gonna buy my 51' Roadmaster from me, because shes absoultly in love with it. It runs, and all the lights work, but the wiring is shot, and is a fire waiting to happen, litteraly. It has exposed wires hangin everywhere. What im wondering, is how hard would it be to re-wire the damn thing? Thinking about it, it doesnt have that many circuits to be wired. The ignition, charging, headlights-tail, brakes, blinkers, high beam, and horn. I can piggy back the horn off the hot wire going to the ignition, along with the brake lights. I can also piggy back the park lights with the headlights, and the licence plate light to the tails. Think this is possible? I was also gonna go with a 12 volt regulater. Iv heard that 6 volt gens have no issues with 12, as long as the system is up to par.
I used a rebel wire a few weeks ago and it went fine, I'd never done it before. The books I used to help me I listed and reviewed here.
You have already answered your own question ! ( It runs, and all the lights work, but the wiring is shot, and is a fire waiting to happen, litteraly. It has exposed wires hangin everywhere. ) You are already at the right place to get a nice , easy to install Rebel Wiring Harness ! So spend the $$$$$$ & do the right thing ! Buy a NEW wiring harness today !
Yes, Dont mess around and buy a harness. 80.00-120.00 or so. We can help you step by step. lots of information here already listed in getting started on this project. Do a search.
You can get a restorer-quality exact match one for ~250. Or you can get a modern one with the wires labeled every foot or two and with more circuits for less.
Re-wiring is not that hard. Get rid of the old stuff and start from scratch. If you need advice pm me or give me a call.
The easy way out is to just buy a harness. That is the modern hot rodding. I'm not a modern hot rodder so yes you can rewire your car without a wire kit. You didn't say, are you keeping everything stock or are you upgrading to 12Vs? If you are keeping it stock, a modern 12V wire kit will be more confusing than starting from scratch because you will have to undo things that the kits assume that you want. You will have to learn both systems at the same time so that you can understand what is included in the kit that you can't use and what is not include in the kit that you do need. Starting from scratch you only need to learn what you do need. All of those other generic circuits won't cloud your mind. If you do learn wiring systems then there will come a time when meshing the 2 won't be that big a deal but jumping into it with no basic knowledge can feel overwhelming. If you decide to go against the tide and try to do it yourself, don't be scared. Thousands of rodders did it before you and they were not rocket scientists either. If you are just rewiring the basic Buick systems then you will learn a lot. That is a great first time wiring project. If you plan on changing engines and other modern up grades then changing to 12Vs with a kit might be a smart decision. Once you know where you are headed then specific questions can be formulated and answered. No matter which way you go, get a shop manual for your car. It should have the wiring diagram in it for you to study. You can learn a lot just from that. When you say "piggy backed" I'm assuming you mean that the separate circuits can be bundled in the same section of harness...yes they can be included in the same bundle and usually are.
From a guy who's wired a lot of stuff and is self taught.......buy a loom. Right now the skillset you need to build revolves around installing the loom. That's a different ballgame than building a loom, and plenty of challenge in itself (unless you're a hack). Once you've done one nice premade loom install and the car is right, now you're in the skill arena of building your own loom successfully. Just my honest opinion as a realist and all-around skeptic. good luck
FWIW after studying half a dozen books on wiring and reading wiring kit install manuals and everything else I could find on the net, I decided to get a kit for my first one. My reasoning was that I wasn't 100% sure what gauge wire I needed for each circuit I thought I may need the labeled and color coded wires for my first job(it sure was nice) I had many circuits to run I didn't think I'd save that much money(in retrospect i probalby woulda saved a lil) I didnt have the time/space to lay out all my wires on a big sheet of plywood to make my own harness I was afraid that I'd really *need* the different colors/labeling for trouble shooting Now that I did it, I'm glad I did. I spent enough time on that thing without making my own dang harness!!! Luckily I didn't need much in the way of troubleshooting, and it sure was nice to read that label on each wire and know what it was supposed to go to. On a simple car like yours, you could do it all with just one color wire without much trouble at all, there just isn't much too it. I don't regret my decision to use a rebel wire the first time. For all my electric fans and relays and crap...if I had all black wires...what a pain in the arse, I'm glad I went with a kit. Yeah its non traditional I guess, but god it made life a lot simpler! And it sure looks modern under the dash or anywhere you can see the wire, if I were worried about that .
I've used EZ Wiring Harnesses on a couple of cars, takes a weekend to do a full car. They work well and each wire is labelled every couple of inches on where it goes. They start at $125 for a 21 circuit mini fuse type.
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