Good starters guide to automotive wiring?

airmenair

airmenair

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Joined
Aug 18, 2005
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Location
Arlington, Texas, USA
I'm going to have to do some wiring in my car before too long and I am admittedly weak and inexperienced in this field. Can anyone recommend a good book or starters guide to those new to automotive wiring?

Thanks :mrgreen:
 
What type of wiring will you need to do?
 
At a guess, he's going to need to rewire for his new alternator. :D
 
Spectre said:
At a guess, he's going to need to rewire for his new alternator. :D
Click to expand...

Haha yup :D, also I'm going to put in an electric fan and a MSD electronic ignition to start with. Eventually, when I get good enough at it I want to rewire the entire car.

This is for a 67 Mustang by the way.
 
Well, I have the special tools to crimp a new battery/starter/alternator cable of the size you're going to need. The cables can be gotten at CarToys, the terminals can be gotten there as well. Let me know if you want help that way.

Regarding the Taurus electric fan - what do you plan to use to control it? And you are aware that you'll need some special high-amp Bosch relays to power it, right?
 
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Yep I was planning on using a Bosch 75A relay most likely and of course a temperature switch. I haven't gotten the fans yet but I found some at the junkyard and hid them. The ones I hid were two speed though, I'm not sure if I want to go that route and complicate my life a little more or not.

Thanks for the offers, I'll let you know when I get into the meat of the project.
 
Just wondering... you browse the classics section of mustangforums.com? Chances are, anything you need to do, someone there will have already done and will be able to walk you through it. Well worth the time there, us classics section people are nothing like the people in the modern sections.
 
I'm a member of stangnet and have a friend who once had a restoration shop and has built classic mustangs before. They're usually my resource for really specific information about these cars but I would like to have a guide that I can reference quickly and look up the information I need. If I can't find it or don't understand it then I'll ask my friend/the internets.

I don't really know how the different mustangs sites compare, I've only been on stangnet. How does mustangforums compare to stangnet and the hundreds of others?
 
airmenair said:
Yep I was planning on using a Bosch 75A relay most likely and of course a temperature switch. I haven't gotten the fans yet but I found some at the junkyard and hid them. The ones I hid were two speed though, I'm not sure if I want to go that route and complicate my life a little more or not.

Thanks for the offers, I'll let you know when I get into the meat of the project.
Click to expand...

I've had some experience in wiring up electric fans. :D

You'll want a Hayden 3647 fan controller from O'Reilly in addition to the Bosch relay, and use it in place of the temp switch.
 
No, it's a thermostatic controller that will let you easily do run-after-shutdown, activate with AC, thermostatic on, etc., etc.

There isn't anything you can do to avoid the spike, really. You can try to start it slowly, but the EMI backfeed will cause whatever you use to slowly destroy itself.
 
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Well I had a decently long reply here but the forum decided to go down for a bit and eat it.

Anyway, I don't use stangnet, so I don't know how it compares. Looking at the two, MF has about 20k more posts in the classics section than SN, and the classics section at MF has very little spam or flaming, so nearly all of it is decently usable. Most of the regulars at MF know each other enough to the point we can recommend certain people for certain advice. Lots of members there who do lots of full restorations and builds, so tons of firsthand knowledge, specs, diagrams and pictures are easily had.

We also have our classic-specific FAQ (which was a thread before a forum upgrade ate the formatting) which is here: http://midnightdsigns.com/james/FAQs.htm
 
I can offer a tip for wiring. Buy a big bag of block connectors for when you inevitably cut the wrong wire and something important stops working. :p
 
Heh, that is decent advice. On the other hand, I keep quantities of all the common crimp connectors around anyway - you never know when you're going to need something.
 
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