AAAAAHHHHHHH! F%#&ING WIRING!!!

dont pay to have someone do it for you, get a painless or other aftermarket harness and do it yourself. the really nice thing about aftermarket harnesses, like the painless harness, is that the wires are marked as to where they go so there is no guess work. all you have to do is run the wires, cut them to length, and terminate the ends. ther only hard part is getting over the tedious nature of rewiring a complete car.

I actually removed the entire, virtually unmolested, wiring harness out of my wreck and installed it in the bare shell I picked up. If you find a parts car at a wrecker you may be able to go this route.

I think I remember Edbert having a painful time with his painless harness. I bet labor would be more than the harness, and the harness is 650ish IIRC.

Standard 12 circut Painless

I put the standard 12 circiut painless in mine 2 years ago.
I made an "L" bracket to rotate the fuse panel 90 degrees from stock.
It was a tight fit but it works great.
the 12 circiut hot rod harness is cheaper than the mustang specific one.

Not long after I finished it, they came out with the Mustang Kit. The same thing happened about 10 years ago with my Jeep. They came out with the Jeep harness just after I put the 12 circuit in.

brianj5600 said:

I think I remember Edbert having a painful time with his painless harness. I bet labor would be more than the harness, and the harness is 650ish IIRC.

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the 18(or is it 21?) circuit universal painless harness is like $260. labor is going to be between 55 and 75 dollars per hour depending on where you live, and you can figure a good 8 hours to wire car.

I was thinking of the Mustang specific, $590 at Summit. I just looked and the 18 circuit is $305, but I'd be suprised if a shop could get it done in 8 hrs. Maybe a factory replacement harness, but harness that need trimmed and plugs put on will drag on well past 8 hrs.

Just curious, why hasn't anyone suggested using a factory (aftermarket) harness as a replacement? Are these waaay more expensive than going the Painless route? Would seem to be the easiest since it's R&R. Do they not make them yet? Guess I have been lucky in that my harness is in great shape and the one thing I haven't had to mess with yet

jcode68 said:

Just curious, why hasn't anyone suggested using a factory (aftermarket) harness as a replacement? Are these waaay more expensive than going the Painless route? Would seem to be the easiest since it's R&R. Do they not make them yet? Guess I have been lucky in that my harness is in great shape and the one thing I haven't had to mess with yet

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Same thing I was thinking, I used a replacement OE style harness a few years ago when I first started working on mine. Basically plug and play, no cutting, crimping, or soldering needed.

Despite the additional cost one of those harnesses and a Osborn assembly manual my be just the thing for you.

some of those oe style harnesses dont have some things installed like interior lights, some connectors, etc. some places want you to send your old harness to them to install everything from your old harness, and then they ship it back to you. as far as cost goes, the last time i looked, i figured that to rewire my mustang with oe style harnesses would run something like $900 just for the harnesses. as far as wiring a complete car in 8 hours, it can be done, but the effort is intense, and if you had read what i wrote, i said a good 8 hours meaning 8 hours minimum.

I got a bid for $2K from a top-end professional shop, not including parts. if you are keeping things stock it should only take a few days, it is all the aftermarket stuff that screwed me, that and trying to do it all at once.

I was reading up on I squared (www.isqe.com I think) and they have a system of wiring that plugs switches into a controller, and the controller turns on and off a power block, which is basically just a bunch of relays. It apparently simplifies wiring, but I don't really see it, it just chucks all the relays in one place and controls them with a mini computer. You may end up with less wiring overall, but you're going to have more, heavier gauge wire carrying more current further around the car.

Anyway, that's beside the point that I want to make, they said that a complete rewire will take on average 40 hours, so even if it's only going to take 1/4 of what they said, that's still 10 hours.

The key is to do it yourself, be patient, and work on completing single modules, not bits of everything, and document well (put tape on wires and sets of wires and write what they are/do, and keep it all neat). Heck most of those things are what you should do when engineering anything.

My friend has a saying when contemplating doing anything himself:

If a high school dropout can do it, so can I.

I've had to tell myself that a couple of times but after each project I ended up with a bit more experience under my belt and money in my pocket.

If you’re not adding a lot of aftermarket electrical components I say an original type harness is easiest.

Dan

DissFigured said:

I may try and do it myself. I am a reasonably smart guy. I even have a bachelor's in software engineering.
I have just found that when it comes to this car, i get really dumb really quickly and I fear I am going to rip all my wires out and not beable to get the new one installed for one reason or another and I am going to end up w/ a half wired car that wont start stuck in my driveway.

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I've seen many of those. Wiring a car correctly takes time and planning. It was one of the most time consuming projects I've ever done (and I've done alot of custom stuff to my car). I also went way overboard, but I bet I have one of the safest, most robust electrical systems ever on a vintage Ford.

DissFigured said:

I may try and do it myself. I am a reasonably smart guy. I even have a bachelor's in software engineering.
I have just found that when it comes to this car, i get really dumb really quickly and I fear I am going to rip all my wires out and not beable to get the new one installed for one reason or another and I am going to end up w/ a half wired car that wont start stuck in my driveway.

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Hey I'm a reasonably smart guy with a bachelor's in SE as well so I know the situation you're in. It makes you feel stupid to be overwhelmed by something as simple as electricity SEEMS to be. The biggest problem is that it is invisible so you can't see a problem if you run across one. Continuity testers help make it visible.

I love planning as much risk out of things as I can, and having done SE, learned all about designing before implementation, so perhaps for guys like us it might be better for you to plan out the system you want to do. For instance you might want to start with a main power module - if your battery is in the trunk, bring a heavy gauge power cable to the centre of where you need it, and ground the battery well, and the engine. Perhaps hook the charging system to the battery before that.

The electrical system I want to build is a relayed system. A relatively small wire goes to the ignition key so that when it gets to the ON position, it turns on a relay. This relay can in turn power everything in the dash that requires ON ignition power and the relays elsewhere that need it, like perhaps an electric fuel pump.

Make sure you just work on one system at a time, basically each one is going to be:

wire - switch - wire - device - wire

I agree with what Dan said about the highschool dropout, and I look at electrical and engine stuff that gets talked about here and elsewhere and sometimes it overwhelms me, but I think, well, if these guys can do it, there's no reason I can't. I don't mean any offense, nor do I mean to compare said people to highschool dropouts, just that I'm sure as heck I'm just as good. Maybe I need some more knowledge, but that's not that hard to obtain.

I remember looking at gp001's wiring (I think it was his) with all the relays on a board and that's the kind of thing I want to do. Mine will hopefully seem more neat and understandable to me. I didn't build gp's so I'm sure it's as neat and understandable to him as I hope mine will be.

Also if you do end up with a half-finished electrical system, make sure what you've done is labelled or documented clearly, so if you do need to get it finished professionally it should be a fair bit cheaper than redoing the whole lot.

I have a BA, and am an IT vet with 15 years of experience. But wiring this car is pretty daunting for me, mainly since I have so much non-stock stuff. Check out this webpage ( http://www.edbert.net/painless.htm ), maybe it will help.

I rewired my car with the universal painless kit last summer. It took me about 80 hours/10x8 hour days. I had to cross reference the old harness to the new, the old wiring diagran to the new etc. I learned a lot about how the switches and the electrical system works. The time consuming part was the planning. If I could go back I would have paid the $575 for the plug and go 65-66 Mustang kit. It would have saved me the headache. When I was done bye the way, my horn was honking and the windshield wipers wouldn't stop. I had the brake/turn lights interchanged with the tail lights. It took more time to figure all that out.

DissFigured said:

My car is all stock so hopefully that will help.
I am thinking of going with a universal harness as they seem to be tremendously cheaper.

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How much is yout time worth? Seems to me that if you are not very experienced with electrical systems and you have a stock ride, you would be better served to replace with an OEM harness. You might spend a couple hundred bucks more for it, but ask yourself if 10 x 8 hour days is something you are looking forward too. Also, many people don't have the patience to work through the issues and would probably give up after day 2, then pay someone else to finish the work. That would cost more than the OEM harness for sure.
Don't get me wrong, I try to do as much work myself as I possibly can as I also subscribe to the highschool dropout theory. I also enjoy working on my car and know that nobody but me will take the time to pay attention to the details like I will. That said, I am also a realist and did farm out final bodywork and paint etc. Good luck which ever way you decide to go. You have plenty of folks here to support you :SNSign: