Wiring Puzzle

This week I have an update, but to be honest although I spend the whole day doing things I don’t seem to have got very far. When I arrived at Mustang Maniac it was its usual busy self, with people waiting for the Adam. As Adam was not around, I had a word with Yogi (who incidentally has a fan club thing going on at Mustang Maniac blog). Anyway not sure what that is all about, but I digress, we decided that wiring again this week was the priority due to the fact that my transmission was in a storage bay right by some temporary cover being errected, this was to house Chris’ Coupe so it didn’t get wet while the body shop was being used.

The wires still looked as bad when I last saw the mess that I left myself, I was kinda hoping that they would all jump into place, but no. So I had to decide where and what I wanted to do. Starting from the rear I sleeved the cables and run the cable along the door sill up to the dash, this helped in keeping it a single neat line.

For the engine I decided that the main loom was going to run the traditional route inside the engine bay around the left side shock tower, the engine loom would be almost stock maybe with a slight difference for the solenoid wires.

The worst part of this job is to work out what holes will be used for what loom, you are better of starting with the long wires and working back towards the fuse box where the wiring becomes more intense. As the wires are being threaded through the firewall you have to be extremely careful not to slice the wires or tear the shielding of that will cause a bad connection or failure. So it’s a case of put some through from the inside of the car and then coil the slack, go to the engine bay and pull the slack through and repeat. As the wires has connectors on them I protected all the paint work with a fitted sheet. This turned out to be a good choice as the neutral colours showed up exactly what I was doing. With the wires pulled through I sleeved up the cables and left the sleeve tight up to the firewall as to not get in the way. I looped up the cables I would not be using just yet. So although it looks unsightly it will be made neater later on. The American Autowire loom has the wires labelled up but I don’t want to see them. Although the new fuse box will give the game away from the first glance I want it to remain as stock as possible.

The main loom to the lights was again feed the traditonal route and sleeved as the wires went through the front support. The braided sleave looks nice and neat and not intrusive to the eye. The main loom hangs helpless for now until we are sure everything works fine before we tidy and finalise it all.

The engine loom was threaded out and again braid sleeve slipped over. Once the wires had been laid out I wrapped them up just for now.

The inside has gone from a complete nightmare to a headache, so I take that as big step forward.

What I am amazed about is the amount of wire loom tape I have used. I ordered a roll of 19mm and 25m long and I have all but a few feet left. Where did it all go as I have no idea. I have ordered some more this week ready for another session next week where I hope to mount the fuse box and tidy the wires up.