What are folks doing with their X Frame Chevy wiring harnesses? I’m at the point where I need to wire the dash on my 60 ElCo and factory reproduction harnesses are $$$. I’m looking at $800 ish for full factory style vs $200 is for aftermarket universal harnesses. I want to use my original column and switches not the cheese ball tractor looking switches some kits come with. I’ve got 3 partial factory harnesses, but they’re crispy and I’m not sure if I can save connectors. I’m not into old harness gremlins and dash fires. I’m willing and able to wire. It doesn’t need to be factory, just clean and reliable. What have y’all done on your cars? Anyone know a source for factory style connectors? Thanks.
Not just on X frames but my line of thinking is that while "Universal" wiring kits work well where you are using mainly aftermarket gauges , switches and pieces they come with their own can of worms when it comes to getting them to work with all original pieces. You usually spend a lot of hours putting together secondary hanesses or spend a lot of extra money to get them.
You can go universal and have more circuits plus blade style fuses. The terminals can be replaced with new while using the original plastic plugs. Cheaper, better, and utilizes factory switches.
By 1960 car electrics were getting to be more advanced, more redundant circuits, etc. My car was an easy decision since my wiring was a rats nest of bad fixes. I went after market and it worked out well. My car has no options so I got away with 14 circuits.
Is this the instrument cluster harness needed by OP? https://www.lectriclimited.com/dash-instrument-cluster-harness-98970
I usually buy the universal ones, I can do some soldering and tracing for $600 difference, plus I can mount the fusebox anywhere so it's not necessary to be a contortionist to access it.
Get yourself 5 spools of different color #14 stranded, a fuse box from a cabin cruiser. Only use brass switches, buttons ect for boats. Get yourself a good soldering gun with some silver solder and flux. Get some 3/M harness wrap along with one roll of 3/4" and one roll of 2" wide 3M 33 tape.. Never use any kind of crimp unless you follow it with solder.
Take a look at Kwik wiring harnesses.There are utube video"s on them. Kind of a delux universal kit. Each wire has what it goes to printed on the jacket.Not the cheapest,but its what im going to use in my 55 Chevy when I get that far.
I had this dilemma for some time as well. I finally decided to go with a aftermarket harness (EZ-Wiring) and it was the best decision I could have made. I had no problems connecting to the factory accessories in my 58 Belair, plus the wiring is hidden and most people would never know its not original anyway. I certainly feel safer with new modern wiring and its a bonus having the extra circuits.
If you’ve got the oem harness, it’s pretty easy to build a duplicate. Just buy the wire and terminals, tape the old one down to the work bench and build a duplicate. Wrap it with the appropriate tape, or whatever you want to do. There’s a variety of companies selling that stuff ( including cloth insulation for older cars). Run a search here, all the info will come up. There’s fuse panels available in either modern or glass fuses. Some, like Centech are a bit fancy and pricey, but have fine thread connectors at the panel. Mine’s been fine for almost 20 years. Use your time and save your money.
This has been an interesting thread relevant to the OP question. https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/painless-wiring-warning.1276527/
I use Universal harnesses in hot rods and stuff like that but if it were my choice and money I get one from American Auto wire for the car. They are very nice and have all the connectors for it plus they have a few extra fuses for accessory stuff if you need it. Not really too expensive considering it's got everything for it including switches that are Factory styled
There is nothing to an x frame harness. You can buy connectors at Napa and re use your original switches and firewall connectors. I put a used, uncut 59 Biscayne dash harness into my ElCamino and rebuilt the under hood harness. I added a second fuse box on a relay for accessories. This was 10 years ago. I am now saving to do a new universal harness.
I think I’m leaning toward starting with an aftermarket harness and going from there. Repo is around $350 just for the dash, plus $100 engine, $200 headlights, $100 taillights, and so on…. I’m on a budget and $$$$ spent delays driving the car. I dug around and found all three of my dash harnesses and I should be able to salvage most of the switch connectors I need. The bulkhead connectors are crumbly, but I can work something out. I used to play with imports in CA and got a OBD2 converted 92 Honda with an engine swap to pass BAR running a factory ECU. This old Chevy is pretty basic compared to that rats nest. I did find the 3rd, but it was too dark for a new pic. Thanks for the input guys! I appreciate the opinions.
Junkyard piece. Think it was a 1979. I cut the wires about 6" from the box. You can look at the markings on the front of the box and turn it over and see the corresponding wire for that circuit. I just marked each wire and took off from there. Worked out fine and I'm still running glass fuses
That is what is in my car. I found the price to be about 1/2 what others charged. The instruction book is key and theirs was great. Other kits have light sockets, etc. Which drives the price up. Anything I needed like maybe 6 light sockets I bought as I needed them.
On a car where you're going to use the factory gauges, switches, etc, you can't beat the nice factory aftermarket harness kits being offered. The plug and play factor and the fact that everything is (mostly) terminated makes for a quick installation. If you don't mind how the factory harness was ran (across the top of the firewall, inner fender, core support, etc) and you don't mind using the factory holes to run the wire through, another vote for the factory style harness. If you're building a car where you want to hide the majority of the wire and not have it come through the firewall in the stock locations, etc. then I would go with a universal harnesses. These typically have more flexibility and come unterminated, which brings with it more labor. The universal harnesses are typically more labor intensive when it comes to organzing the branch circuits as opposed to the factory style where the manufacturer knows how far the key switch is from the fuse panel, etc. and can lay them out to suit. The universal harness is just that and each branch circuit is lumped together and left up to you to split things up and lay them out.
I've got a Rebel 9+3 kit in my '39 p/u and '54 Ranch Wagon. I had a friend help on the '39 p/u install and it was a piece of cake. Unfortunately he passed before the wagon rewire but I was able to handle it myself with only a couple of calls to Rebel's excellent tech support. But back to the OP question, if it was me I'd go with a complete plug and play harness. Everyone has their own favorite supplier and I'm sure they will all get the job done. My recommendation is YnZ Yesterdays Parts: https://www.ynzyesterdaysparts.com/
I use aftermarket universal harnesses on all my builds, but as mentioned above I am always using aftermarket gauges also, so it works well. I also use the typical 60's style GM headlamp switches, so I get a universal that comes with the plug to work with those type switches, and makes them easier to wire. I've done 4 for my own cars, and more than that for other's cars, and no issues at all with any, except one that came with the new headlamp switch. It failed after just one year, and had to replace the switch with a NOS I found on Ebay.
Mine was a little tricky with the quad headlights and even the dome light threw me a little. I used later GM tail light sockets and parking light sockets from Dorman. This also required some weatherpack connectors. A full kit with all the bells and whistles would have been a waste of $$ for me.
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