I have a few questions on GM WeatherPack Terminals. Are there any experts here? I need to figure out how you pick the right male/female leads to go with a certain Tower/Shroud Combo. Do you simply mate teh wire guage to the leads which can be used in ANY Tower/shroud? I am hoping to use a couple flat 6 units to make a modular harness for my dash wiring. I have Both a Carquest Picture Catalog and the WeatherPack website up. Still a little murky to me.
They are a wiring plug system. I am going to be using them to be able to unplug my entire dash loom and remove the dash. We use them a lot at work but am having trouble finding the right part 3s all of the sudden. They come in singles/2s/3s/4s/6s etc. They happen to be weatherproof since they use Sillycone seals I also plan on using them for the headlights instead of **** connectors.
Ya Gots to have the right series. There are three series in common use. You have to match the terminal to the body in each series. Within a series, you can install a male terminal in a male body, or female body, and vise versa. You also have to use the right type of crimping tool, it does a round crimp, otherwise the terminal might not fit in the body. Get the seals too, if there is any chance they may get wet.
When I needed some I went down to the local Chevy dealer and talked to one of the service tech guys, he gave me lots of good info and a bunch of the terminals for free. If that wont work I know Pep Boys sells the parts to service them. GM Weatherpack connectors .
I have the crimper and the removal tool. My literature doesnt say anything about "series" I hear ya on the seals.
I'll have to dig out my catalog in the morning to get the series numbers, FWIW, you could call them small medium and large. They all look about the same, but the body and pins are different sizes. NAPA carries all three sizes.
try Waytek,Inc i'm using thier stuff right now on a project i'm doing and thier catalog(free) explains alot. check'm out http://www.waytekwire.com/weather-pack.htm I just put a weather-pack on my MSD
When I was working with lots of GM wiring issues, I had a huge fat Packard/Delco catalog with endless parts for both Weatherpack and type ...um..56?...57? terminals, the spade ones GM used in the sixties and seventies. I learned not to try digging up the right plastic housings--I just harvested those at the junkyard, washed them in thinner, and put in the easy to find male and female terminals new. One dead Caddilac would get me more varieties of connector than I could imagine, and each car seemed to have a few useful specials that weren't in the catalog.
Waytec only carries the 280 series. male bodies 1 pin 38060 2 pin 38062 3 pin 38064 5 pin 38068 female bodies 1 pin 38061 2 pin 38063 3 pin 38065 5 pin 38069 cable seals 16 ga 39001 14 ga 39002 male terminal 18-16 30036 14-12 31074 female terminal 18-16 30037 14-12 31075
T-, I used a 15 wire plug set from Parr's to handle all the 14 to 18 ga wires on the dash in the roadster pickup and kept the disconnect under the cowl. Those plugs won't handle the couple 10 ga wires though ,so in that case I'm gonna try covered spade plugs wire tied together male/female/male....should be dry enough under there. It worked out real well. Charlie
T-Man, Sorry, I missed this post until now. I've designed (and corrected) quite a few Packard wiring harnesses, so I'm more than a little familiar with thier system. To answer your question, the terminal to use is based almost strictly on the wire gauge. There are a few oddballs out there, but you can use "standard" terminals in most shroud/tower bodies. Someone here suggested that the cable seals are optional -- they're not. Without them, the terminal has no way of gripping directly to the wire insulation, which pretty much kills pull-out strength. Also, you have to use the Weatherpack tool, otherwise you're not going to be able to fit the terminal into the body. The Waytek catalog offers the most common "keyed" shrouds and towers. Keep in mind though that if you're trying to match a tower or shroud to an existing harness, you have to pay carefull attention to the "clocking" of the pins. Waytek's catalog doesn't have these special "keys", but they do have them in stock. The one thing that irritates me about the Waytek catalog is that they use their own P/N's instead of the Weatherpack ones. Let me know if you have any other questions. It's rare that I can help other HAMBers with information! Ed
Ed, where does the OEM Packard catalog of terminals come from? I think mine was free from the source, and had enough variants of everything to hurt my head, but I lent it out more frequently than I got it back, apparently. I have no memory whatever of the source. Bruce
Tman, not to add to the "mix" of connectors, but I have been using "MOLDEX" conectors. They go from one male/female conections to 16. They are available in "kits" (make your own) from most electronic supply stores. They are often used in computer power supply wiring as well as automotive aplications and can handle up to 10 ga. wire. Only big difference is, they don't have the moisture seals.
Bruce, I'm looking over my catalog as a write this, and the only other name aside from Packard that I see is Delphi. We have two catalogs floating around the office -- one from 1996 and one from 2002. The 2002 edition is absolutely worthless. It's half as thick as the 1996 edition with a quarter of the information. Gone are the technical line drawings; say hello to glossy color photos and fancy verbage! I occ***ionally try to hunt down an older copy on eBay, but haven't had any luck. eBay is an excellent source for old engineering catalogs though -- it's where I found my 1962 MRC bearing catalog, from back when bearing catalogs were lean and packed with information (as opposed to the phonebook-sized one that SKF gave me -- twice as many pages to house less information). Ed
PS- After all that complaining about modern catalogs, let me tell you about the EMJ materials resource book. It has engineering data for all of the metals that they manufacture (steel, sst, aluminum, br***, etc) as well as some engineering guidelines. You can get it for free from thier website although you may have to make up a phony business name.
The Jalopy Journal
