Rewiring article?

I'm looking at rewiring my '67 CJ6 with an EZ-Wire kit. I wondered if anyone knows of any rewiring articles? I haven't found any here, or on any other sites.

 

I used the painless kit. It comes with everything you need. There are lots of books and booklets available out there if you want to learn how to rewire a car. Good luck!

 

Installing a new harness can be a great way to understand just how your Jeep works. Do a google search for " how to re wire a jeep " lots of info to read . Have fun.

 

http://boyink.com/cj6/complete-rewire-with-new-wiring-harness/

This is just one of about 30 I saw in less than 5 minutes on the net! We on this forum have posted 1000's of questions and answers on this site in reference to EZ-wire installations. It's highly unlikely that you will have a question that has not already been asked/answered but fire away. We always like to help a fellow jeeper in need.

 

I rewired my 71' over 2 days one weekend. FWIW I left the existing wiring in place and layed out the new wires next to them and then removed the old. EZ wire had great instructions and excellent phone service as well.

 

Disclaimer: I am just a shadetree mechanic (if that), so anything I say may just be plain wrong.

I rebuild and flip old motorcycles as a hobby / second job, and my jeep is my first jeep, but.... Bikes get more of their wiring exposed to the elements, so maybe this doesn't apply to jeeps, but one of my major rants on working on electrical stuff is.....

Some people say to solder all connections. Some people say to crimp all connections. I think you should do both...

Your copper wire and aluminum/steel crimp on connectors are dissimilar metals. They'll work at first, but as the connection gets road salt and other nasty into it, the metals will react with each other and the connection can go bad if your crimp isn't just right. And we all make mistakes! Likewise, solder forms a good electrical bond, but it is not suitable as a mechanical bond. So my opinion is, crimp it, take a soldering gun and flux it and fill the crimp with solder (making sure that it gets hot enough to flow and stick everywhere), and then put heatshrink on it. And use a dielectric grease in your connectors to help keep the weather out. And stay away from tape, wire nuts, etc. If cheap/junk bikes are anything like old jeeps, the worst problems I have making them work again is awful electrical system hackery by the PO, so please don't be "that guy".

Another thing I like to do is to simplify the electrical diagram into component parts, when I am trying to figure out how something works. Now, there ain't much to my '66, and I assume that your '67 is similarly simple, so I am not sure I'd do it for the jeep, but...

What I do is scan/download the wiring diagram, and them make a copy of it. Then I open it up in a paint program (I use Gimp, but I am sure Photoshop would work just as well) and make a new layer on top. Then (on the new layer) I use a white brush to paint over / "erase" the parts of the diagram that I am not interested in. Since the paint-over is on a different layer, you can go back and "erase" any mistakes back to the complete diagram that is still on the lower layer, and make it translucent to see through it to check on mistakes and stuff. I make several different diagrams like that, one for the headlights, one for the signal lights, one for the ignition, one for the charging system, etc. Then you can kind of just look at the simplified diagram of whatever subsystem you are working on and kind of "intuit" how it is working instead of getting all crossed around trying to trace wires all around on complicated diagrams and all that.

It seems to work for me, anyway, but maybe I am nuts....

Edit: Oh, and I like to put my harnesses into wireloom instead of wrapping them all up in rubber tape, too. Makes it way easier to pull out a single wire and replace it later if something goes wrong somewhere, and you don't end up with stuff spliced in places it doesn't really have to be, because each splice is a potential failure point. I think the wireloom protects just as well as rubber tape, assuming one isn't working with old wire with dry-rotted insulation, in which case it ought to be replaced anyway imo.

 

Thanks for the advice and links. Found this site, which might be helpful for sketching out plans for various projects. I plan on using my projector to throw a full size diagram up of whatever I am working on for rewiring and stereo install. Whatever is missing, I'll draw in, such as large engine components. http://www.the-blueprints.com/blueprints/cars/jeep/