The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay New wiring harness

Am getting close to needing a wiring harness for my 57. The archives provide lots of pros and cons about different brands, so I won't get into that here, but I have some very basic questions. First, my steering column is a 70 suburban, non-tilt, with the curved connector for the turn signals. Do any of the new harnesses come with that connector? Is it as easy as calling the company, and asking them to include it? I really hate the idea of spending good $$ only to have to fabricate such an important component.

Second, photos in the catalogs and harnesses I have seen at swap meets are just coils of wires of various lengths, along with fuse block and packages of connectors. How does one get from that coil to the neat, tightly wrapped harness across the firewall and along the fenders? Do you feed the wires one at a time to their destinations, and then wrap them with tape or bag ties, or the plastic loom??

Thanks in advance for the help

Hey, Russell

Here's everything I did :
My 10-Day EZ-Wire Install

The kit I got was only $165 ... easy to do if you take your time, and you can call them about that connector.

A far as the firewall, etc., use plastic slit loom like I did!

Horvath:
Impressive job!
Sparkchasing in not a good thing in the dark on an old farm road so always try to make sure a good job is done the first time.

Thanks.


Man, I'll never forget that night ... being out in the middle of nowhere ... first time driving my new stovebolt, and sparks making a 4th of July Parade under my dash! It scared the B'Jesus outta me!

I ordered my EZ-Wire kit THAT week ... now, I drive in peace!

Russell! - 3 harnesses I've gotten all had the correct loom as OEM, and all wires except the ones that go to tail were right length w/ right ends, but you have to order for your year, style and equipment - most places have some "options" you can choose, but seems the column connector will be a special order, cuz there's so many different possibilities

Bill

YnZ Wire Harnesses are the cadillac of harnesses from what I have seen.

I have direct and good experience with Rhode Island Wiring and they will provide either a stock or custom built (I used both) harness.

RI Wiring also sell many of those oddball connectors and clips that are unique to vintage vehicles.

Thanks, guys. I knew you wouldn't fail me. The good information I have received through this page will be 99% of the reason my truck will turn out OK. When it starts to look good, I'll post some pictures.

The one i used (and will use agian) is from chevy duty. $100, all ends are already on the wire, all ends also have little "flags" with numbers on them that corespond to thier "idiot proof instruction sheet"

This is the only wiring harness i would use.

Brian K

p.s. all the wires are modern pvc coated, so if you want 100% original, go with someone else

Brian, the $100 harness from Chevy Duty is great for a "near-stocker," it's clean and correct and easy to install. However, if you're running A/C or a half-dozen stereo components it will come up a bit short. Painless, EZwire, and others have custom kits and can build a harness to your specs if needed; expect to pay for this luxury.

I also used the Chevy Duty harness.

Hey Brian K -- Were any of the wires in your harness too short? The left parklamp wires in my kit wouldn't reach the parklamp. I'm waiting to hear back from CD.

Other than that minor flaw, the harness was very easy to install and works and looks great.

Thanks

I run a Chevy Duty harness. All the wires reached. Did you run the parklamp to the junction block on the fender or skip it? I had to cut the wires from the j-block to the parklamps from the supplied coil.

I ran the main harness wires to the left front by the horn. The headlamp and parklamp wires (for the left side) fork here and only leave about 8" to the parklamp. The connection for the parklamp is a bit further than that. This connection I'm talking about is (I think) the junction block you mentioned. It's on the inside front panel that the radiator mounts to. It's not on the grill.

Thanks

on mine, they all worked great.

For all the "extra accesorys" i found another fuse box in a scrap yard, and mounted it inside the cab on the firewall. Then i built my own harness (one wire at a time) for all the extra things i added.

Brian K

(all of this was on a 49 chevy)