Wiring the Right Way

Posted by Classic Rides AZ on

**Full Instructions with images coming soon, See below for the products I use**

There are a lot of different ways to do wiring, but most DIY wiring projects are done wrong.  We have all seen a wide range of ways from bare wires twisted together wrapped in electrical tape, to household wire nuts holding wires together.  These have no place in a road vehicle.  At best they will cause intermittent failures and worst case your car will catch on fire. 

 

I spent the first half of my career as a manufacturing engineer developing standards and picking tooling to build vehicle mounted electronics. I also have tried many things on the classic cars that I drive on a daily basis and know which things work and which do not.  I have become very picky about wiring and what I use because I don't want to work on the same thing twice.  I realize that a typical project vehicle will have a few iterations and changes over the years as our needs change, so flexibility to change things later is important.  

 

Tools

What is your favorite stripper?  Wait, don't answer that.  This is my favorite. 

 

 

This is the crimp tool I use for insulated terminals for wire sizes 10-22AWG

  

Materials

Insulated heat shrink marine crimp terminals are the very best way to connect wires in your vehicle. I love this multipack because it has most everything you need for automotive wiring projects and the container makes it easy to keep it all organized.  Realistically I use the butt splices more than anything else so I run out of them long before the others.  When this happens, I just get a set of butt splices to refill the handy container. Be very careful that you actually get the marine terminals because they are the only ones that have the adhesive that melts and keeps water from getting into the connection.  This is the reason these are so reliable. 

 

 After crimping a connector, always try to pull the wire out of the connector.  If it pulls free, it would have failed in service.  It's best to find it now while it is easy to fix.  

 

Heat shrink after the crimp connection is complete using a heat gun or lighter.  The lighter I use is shown below, it is perfect for automotive work because it can get to wherever you need. 

 I keep this Butane on hand to refill the lighter since I use it so often

 

 

After many years of refining wiring methods, I have found my favorite way to build a wire harness.  Split braided wire sleeve allows you to build a clean wire harness that you can add wires to in the future without rebuilding the entire harness.  It looks clean and does not get brittle and break over time like most options available in your local parts store. 

Sleeving between 1/4" and 1" will build harnesses for an entire car.  I like to keep all of this on hand for harness building

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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