Cheap way to wire your hot rod, classic car or truck with a 12 circuit universal wiring harness #2

all right welcome back to the poor touring channel today all of you lucky people watching this get to have the benefit of what i'm doing for my brother so he can install this harness in his 50 chevy five window cap pickup if you guys have been watching my channel recently you see this he put a 261 in we're keeping it fairly original he was talking about just running one wire at a time and i was like you know you know by the time you get done buying uh all the wiring and whatnot uh ends up being about the same price and at least this one you got fuses got the flashers on it i'm gonna do some more videos but i really have to get this one out of the way because i'm up here in wyoming right now with my parents and uh i need to leave this with him before i go back to colorado so i'm just getting this out of the way there's going to be more videos to come on this and i've been wanting to kind of do this for a while and now it's given me a good excuse to do this i'm going to go over what box i use and why in later videos just so you know this is the 12 circuit you can pick these up for dirt cheap on amazon or ebay shipped to the door for under 80 bucks i've used a bunch of them i prefer these like i said i'll get into all this later on but just so you know what it is this actually works also for a very similar box of this that's the uh 21 circuit or whatever and i'll get into which one works better but the bottom line is is that this is more set up for you know like a 60s and down vehicle it doesn't have like a bunch of stuff like power windows and power seats and whatnot this is good for just a good old basic old-school chevrolet even ford by the way fords are positive ground so there's some different complications and i'm not going to get into any of that because i don't build fords and you know there's other people on there that give the information on that and you can take what i've said add their peculiarities that you have to go through um to make everything work if you're putting a v8 chevy engine in it and everything like that i mean there's really not that much extra stuff that you need to do to get it to work a lot of guys use aftermarket gauges which they're all set up for negative ground so you don't really have that big of an issue anyways we're going to roll on otherwise this video is going to take forever and a day so um basically i've installed i don't even know how many of these harnesses by now and i can usually as long as i don't run into any major snags i can probably have one in in a couple of days so i'll share with you some of the tips that i've found in doing this and my biggest one is i always take and prep this whole harness out before i put it into the vehicle if you lay it out on your garage floor or as i'm doing in my parents living room here put a nice white carpet down so it's easier to see for everybody and you separate everything out i made a list basically and i'm gonna i wish i actually had it printed out it's in color um and it goes through all of the all the circuits and i'm gonna see if i can get this to show up i can't it's now you can kind of see it it goes through every circuit and i broke it down between front arm there you go you can see a little bit better there front harness rear harness dash harness um turn sig or column harness and then basically i separate them out even further from there and we'll go through that really quick here so i guess we'll just dive in um i'm sorry you guys can't really see this i'd like to have a list so you can follow around along but but if you can if i get this posted up on i don't even know pinterest or something like that i'll try to leave a link down in the bottom later on and that way you guys can pull up a list of this there you can also if you go in uh i think it's easy wire or one of those and you do a google search and i can put information in later on they have a schematic on there that kind of shows everything but to me it looks like a bunch of colored spaghetti all over the place and a big spider mess some of you guys might like it go with that but me i like to start out at the top and with the very first important thing and the first thing on the list and i need to scroll back up to the top because i went down is the main big battery power supply and if you look here we'll see how good this works out this is your front harness and basically i know that just from experience it has the most wires in it it's the thickest one if you compare it to all the rest that's the rear that usually has the brightest colors in it there's a lot of oranges and yellows and whatnot the key switch on is very recognizable because of these connectors and they're actually if you're not running a gm column you're going to take those off which i'm going to do on this we're trying to keep everything looking as original as possible and i hate seeing the gm columns in there i'm not sure how everybody else feels on my list i've got it written down and some of you might be saying why would you do that are these wires not marked no they're absolutely marked but they're really small i like the list because at a glance i can see what's what so basically don't do what i'm doing right now unless you've got room to lay everything out i'm going to cut this harness i know i have to and you'll see why in a minute take these zip ties off and roll it out on the list one of the first things that i'm going to change is the exciter wire and that's this very white wire here now on your particular application unite might not be wanting to do this and you might be asking why are you taking that wire out of that loom well basically we're going to be running a dummy light on the dash if you run a uh i we usually run the 10 si alternator which is the three wire uh mid 70s up until the oh i mean they used it all the way up into the 80s alternator you basically need a key on power source to get power to your dummy light on the dash or to the alternator and you either if you don't run the dummy light you have to run a resistor so basically when they made this harness they loomed it this into the harness that goes up to the engine and i actually want this wire to go and somebody's calling that's my brother decline so basically i'm going to pull that wire out of the harness mess and i'm just going to put it off to the side for now pull it back through here because that's going to end up and all i'm going to do i left this upper zip tie i'm just going to give it a little bit because it is going to have to go back to the engine bay i'm gonna leave probably now he's calling the house i'll leave probably four foot on that i'll dial it in later on if you take the time to separate this harness out on the floor before you put it in make a list of everything that you're going to have to wire in it it's going to save you a lot more time let's see here so we've got that now i'm going to split this this harness into two because basically they put the headlights the headlights and the um engine harness all in the same one which is fine they probably end up i usually end up running them through the same hole in the firewall but i'm going to separate these out because usually once they punch through the firewall i separate them so we've got ac we've got tachometer we've got what's left of the exciter wire in there let me put some tape on here so you gotta cut that yeah by the way never never tape this harness up until everything is said and done and run it never fails any time i tape one up that uh you end up having to move a wire and then you're either cutting all your tape off or running some more tape over the top this is an interesting one i don't know why they put this in here but it's power antenna which i don't know any vehicles you'd run that on other than later stuff by the way this 12 circuit harness doesn't work very well on on later model vehicles and definitely not fuel injection well i mean you could but you got to run a separate harness just for fuel injection this is more for something that's very basic you know points ignition or hei one wire going to it what not this isn't going to control a bunch of fuel injectors or an ecm or anything i mean you could get a power source to the ecm but that's about it so um okay so we've got left front part which is a brown wire and it splits we're going to kick that off to the other side left front turn is this kind of and that's a brown wire the left front turn is kind of a light green wire let's hear what else do we got here fan low beam they kind of put these together in one tape so i don't know why they would do this they taped the starter solenoid wire which is purple into this now we're going to cut that tape off of there just a waste of masking tape or electrical tape okay and that's going to go over with the engine harness of course on my brother's truck and this is stuff you be prepared for it it has a foot starter so we don't even need this um so this purple wire there's two different things you can do you could take this thing completely out of the harness or what i like to do is i still like to run it even if i've got a foot start i like to run it in to the harness and then wire it up to the because this purple wire keeps going up and ends up at the key switch i like running it up there and leaving it in the harness because basically if you decided later on that you got tired of the foot start for whatever reason you could put in a regular solenoid style starter and and uh do that and you got the wire in place already that is if you remembered you did that okay we've got gray heater fan wire as i said the big red wire is for your battery now by the way this is very important this is your biggest gauge wire i don't remember what this is like a 12 or 10 gauge wire but it's the biggest wire in the front harness you will not have power to your fuse block until this gets hooked up so if you're trying to go in and test diagnose stuff or whatever and you need power to do it until this wire gets hooked up to your battery or to a battery source and you want this needs to go to something that's hot all the time so you could also if you want to keep everything really clean i like i like putting these to the starter solenoid um that doesn't really have a starter solenoid but there's a place where you could hook it now the nice thing is on the chevy trucks the batteries under the floor so you can really route this clean to where you don't even really see the wire and run it under like where the positive cable is at and then hook it into the you can either hook it to the starter post or you can hook it into the battery so anyways we'll keep that with the engine harness that goes off over here that's your biggest one your medium one and all this stuff's on my chart your medium one is your alternator obviously that goes with your harness now that wire goes to the if you're running a delco alternator actually even on the motorcrafts and whatnot they all have a big big stud uh where your power comes in at so that's going to go to that i made another video on how to wire a 10 si alternator so and i'll try to put a link to that somehow in here so i'm not going to get into how to wire in the components specifically but i will point you in the right direction here eventually okay uh what do we got left over here oil sending unit now this is where things get uh this is kind of like the starter solenoid wire that won't be used we have a manual oil pressure gauge in there so that won't be used either but again i'll leave that in that harness with the front harness and just leave that inside wrapped up in the harness to where you really can't see it and if at a later date he wants to put an electric um oil pressure gauge in there he can or if he decides he doesn't want that in there and doesn't want a bunch of thick wires you can pull it out leave that up to him get a green wire there's like three green wires this one is for the water temp same deal there that's for an electric water temperature gauge if you don't have if you and i'll get into more of this but if you don't have an electric gauge and i'll show you how to tell it at a later date which this one doesn't you don't need it but like i said i'm going to leave that in the front harness pink one is the coil you will need that on pretty much any vehicle that you want to run points ignition that would go to the positive side on the coil don't mess that up and accidentally put it to the negative hei that goes straight into where it says power on the top of the cap there i want to say it's on the right side if you're looking at letters but it'll it clearly says it on the cap of the hei if you're missing your cap you can probably get online and look and see which one says power wire the caps off the power wire is the red wire coming down off of the coil so you can just trace that down okay light tan is low beam i've already said the weird pale green one is left front turn uh dark blue is right front turn this green is going to be horn the dark green one is horn and the lighter green one is your high beam brights for the headlights so this basically is all these wires here are my headlights this is all engine and what i'm going to do in the kit they give some really cheapo zip ties in here [Music] of course i probably left them at his place what i normally do is take those and i will zip up the harnesses so i can keep them separate i'll just reuse the ones that i cut off if you take and cut the zip tie instead of cutting the head off if you cut the backside of it off you can reuse them which i didn't do on all these but whatever okay next section is going to be let me look on my oh my battery is running well great and i'm just working my way down my cheat sheet here um we're going to ignition switch turn signals and all that um this like i said if you're running a tilt column and whatnot this thing most of this stuff plugs right in they give you in this kit the connector that is supposed to plug into the factory egm uh turn signal switch um it does not these do click i think they will click into it but there's some modification you have to make to this and i don't even remember and i'm not going to get into this because we're not wiring this in um we're just going to get an aftermarket turn signal switch for this you can tell all the turn signal stuff has these connectors on there so it's very easy i identify them what i don't like is how they mix the dimmer switch into this harness so basically and i'm not going to do this right now but if you take a and i i don't reuse these now by the way some very good advice here do not mount uh or yeah i don't mount the box until like everything's been run what i do is i find something like bailing wire string you name it and tie the when i go to stick this harness in i'll get it the box where i want it at i run all these where i want them really quick that's the first thing you do is punch those wires through the firewall get them roughly where they're where you want them at once you've got the rear harness run the this roughly going to the ignition switch and everything up under the dash you basically take and hook this well you can use a clothes hanger or whatever some metal rod whatever hang it approximately where you want it after you're done wiring everything in and making sure you've got plenty of length on there i use long self tapping i think number 10 screws and go through both holes and drill them right into the firewall make sure you don't punch into something like an ac line or something crazy like that be be conscious of what you're trying to go to but it's not that big of a deal to hang this at the last at the end however these things don't come with a cover over the fuse block i like to put them under the dash down low enough to where you can still kind of see them if you ended up in an emergency situation and don't have any light you can use the dome light to somewhat see what's going on um but not so far out of reach you can't get to them and whatnot so just some little advice on that like i said i wouldn't i made the mistake on my first car it's a 50 pontiac that i wired and that was 20 years ago now um leaving that in the engine bay and it's filthy dirty nasty and i wish i never would have done it i almost think about rewiring the car because of that um all right i'm not going to get into doing this i'm going to separate this out and maybe have another video just showing that how everything ended up um i'll separate that out last um let's see here i'm going to scroll down i basically split that though into an ignition switch harness if i'm not running a tilt column a turn signal switch harness and then the last one is the dimmer switch but basically that's what i was going to say is on this you got to take a small screwdriver like this is your dimmer and they make it every one that i've ever had they ran all these other wires through it i like to get it as clean as possible if you look it's all interwoven into all these i basically like to take a small screwdriver and i think you go in from the front side in there there's a little tab you push that in and it unlocks and you can unwire this connector slip it all through because i don't know every vehicle on the old stuff they're always down on the floor there's no reason to send this up to the dash harness this needs go down by the way this is awesome these if you use a dimmer switch from i don't even remember i mean you can figure like a 72 camaro or whatever uh upgrade your old stuff they'll plug right in done and you got a factory looking harness on there that's you know somewhat water proof or sealed or whatever help with corrosion because you know you get in after walking through the snow which probably mostly you're like i'm never gonna get in my car with snow on my boots which that means you don't drive your cars like i do so and it is what it is you're not a poor tourer though apparently one big thing i was gonna show on this this right here and this is huge if you don't pay attention to anything else basically we'll run through this really quick pink wire goes to the ignition the coil wire on your ignition switch red wire is your bat battery power in purple is the star solenoid that one that i was telling you that's not even going to get used that wire goes from the front harness which we already separated out all the way around and up to the switch um that's not going to get used but like i said i'm thinking about leaving that in the harness so what do we have left over out of that we've got this black wire obviously this is a jumper battery wire over to whatever this switch was on uh the gm had from the factory and you got an orange and a black wire this wire what i usually end up doing is just if you're using a an aftermarket switch i just with a cheapo ten dollar ones you can get from parts store just cut this off wrap some black tape or whatever you want to do around so this doesn't accidentally arc out underneath the dash like ground out and cause a bunch of problems so get rid of the black wire this orange wire lights up half of the fuse box that's key on and the brown wire is also the accessory wire and that that ends up lighting up is the wrong thing powering up the other half of the key on accessory power if you do not hook both of those up together onto your accessory post which on the key switch that we got for my brother's car all it's got is that power in start which we're not going to even use but that only works when you're cranking the key and then the other post is for the ignition so we're going to have to put the pink the purple and the orange wire all onto one stud and you might say why are you using a switch like that well the ignition switches on the chevy trucks in those years so 47 through 55 first series they're they don't take ignition switches very well this one's got a long shank on it that's threaded and it's gonna work a lot better for for mounting it so it is what it is so um let's see here i'll probably get into a whole different video just for doing the turn signals by the way i'm just going to say this right now one of the best advice that i can give you when you're trying to wire in the turn signals is if you're testing it you actually have to have those signal light bulbs a test light doesn't draw enough to make the flasher actually work sometimes it will but a lot of times it won't so if you get everything wired in you're like oh the turn signals don't work because i'm back here at the back or in the front with my test light and it's not triggering it it's because it's not pulling enough resistance to click the the turn signal relay you by the way you've got a hazard relay and a turn signal relay and they're marked on here this one's your turn and that one's your hazard um you do have a horn relay here okay so that pretty much covers that harness um i think i'm oh my mom's computer shut down so i guess that's it for this video um stay tuned for the second part uh going to be going over the rear harness and the um dash harness i've got to separate stuff out of that too so hopefully you enjoyed what i've said so far maybe your anxiety levels starting to come down at this point and not so intimidated by this i will say it would it helps if you have some wiring experience before you jump into this project but if not watch my videos repeatedly until it just sinks in through your thick skull sleep on it watch some other videos and hopefully between all that you'll figure this out don't get psyched out you can make it through it

Channel: Poor Touring Hot Wire Garage

Views: 1,746

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: -QBzOx-yGY8

Length: 28min 59sec (1739 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 09 2021