Basic (bare Bones) Wiring Loom

[Guest hypermick]

I bought a 2b kit about 2 years ago and recently started to get stuck into it now that time is more plentiful.

When I stripped the donor car I carefully laid out all of the loom having tagged everything up carefully, and took away all the unnecessary bits like audio looms, doorswitches etc etc,.

The donor vehicle is single ohc fuel injected model but I have converted it back to carburettor, to run with standard coil and an Aldon (Bosch) distributor conversion, doing away with the headache gubbins left over from the fuel/ignition management etc,.that part is fine. It fires up a treat, revs freely and sounds A1 !

Having sketched out all of the wiring circuits that would be necessary to get the car to function properly I was wondering if anyone out there has been previously brave enough to take their loom back to absolute basic level, and any problems that were encountered along the way. Any help would be much appreciated before my pet cutters, AVO and ten mugs of tea get stuck into the next bit.

Many thanks..............hypermick,.......

[IanS]

If I was doing my loom again I would make it in 2 bits with connectors between.

The break would be where the loom meets the dash, indicator stalks etc.

Getting a neet transition from dash wireing to body wireing proved a long job.

[Guest Battery Bill]

Mick

If we were doing it again we would leave the wiring till all the important mechanical bits are fitted. We stripped ours right down and made a new one out of the bits but when we started to fit other mechanical bits we found that on some bits of loom we had about 3 foot of spare wire before the connectors

Look Here to see how we got on

Good luck

Bill and Joey

[Guest Ant]

Having sketched out all of the wiring circuits that would be necessary to get the car to function properly I was wondering if anyone out there has been previously brave enough to take their loom back to absolute basic level, and any problems that were encountered along the way.

I've not done it, but here are a couple of pitfalls.

 

- The column switches are not rated high enough to carry the current required by the various circuits such as the wipers, lights, etc. The Sierra loom uses relays to overcome this.

 

- The more simple the wiring loom then the more things end up sharing a fuse. In the donor loom left and right lights, main beam and sidelamps all have individual fuses. This adds bulk to the loom but is much easier if a fault occurs, and it means that you're unlikely to be stuck with no lights at all.

 

- The Sierra loom has fully labelled wiring diagrams in the Haynes manual. If you modify it too much you have to make very careful notes in order to keep track of what's what. If you get a wiring fault in 2 years time how much will you remember?

 

If I were you (and I' not) I'd keep the Sierra loom, remove the engine bay and ECU circuits at the two connectors in the loom, and also remove the lamp warning and auxilluary warning modules. It's pretty straight forward to copy the Haynes diagrams for a non GLS carb'd Sierra using the EFi loom. I'd also remove heated screens, electric windows, etc etc.

 

Oh just thought ... are Dim Dip headlights an SVA requirement? If so then that's an extra complication. Intermittant wipers are another, but they're optional.

 

Ant

[Guest Guy]

I stripped my electrics back to a basic level, I have the EFI setup so I took every part out of the loom that wasn't related to the engin.

 

This is the page of what I did

 

This is a circuit diagram of the ancilary parts for my car.

 

I hope this helps!

[Guest hypermick]

Hi Guys,.

 

My grateful thanks to you all for sharing your experiences regarding the "getting back to the basic loom", and noted the particular point about the excess wiring lengths. I think the deeper you get into one of these the more you realise that you have to be quite ruthless at times to get the job done !!

 

Good point also on the switches not being man enough to take the current/load, so I think what I'll do is use the relays again, only in a simplified block set up alongside a suitable fuse block.

 

Looks like the crimpers, cutters and connectors and soldering iron will be sharing some late nights.

 

reagrds to all

 

Mick