Aftermarket Wiring

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GeorgeGerhard

GeorgeGerhard

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Hello and happy holidays
Has anyone used Ron Francis wiring harnesses?
Were you satisfied?
Any comments would be appreciated

thank you
George
 
the local street rod place by me says the ron francis is junk.. they use the american auto wire kits. they say its top shelf wire and very compete and nice kit. i think they use the highway series..
 
Do you happen to know why they say they are "junk"? I was considering Ron Francis as he started in Mopars over 30 years ago.

American autowire doesn't have a mopar only kit. Would you just use a non-gm kit?

I need to rewire my car an have never done it. Some say EZ Wire some say Painless some say Ron Francis some say American autowire. I am confused!!!!!!

I have never rewired a car so I need the easiest kit possible!! I called a place here in NE Ohio called Wire Wizard and they start with the Painless kits. The ball park quote was between $800 and $2000 to rewired my car.

abodyjoe said:
the local street rod place by me says the ron francis is junk.. they use the american auto wire kits. they say its top shelf wire and very compete and nice kit. i think they use the highway series..
Click to expand...
 
the fuse box wiring and the wire itself isn't so great from what they say. the shop uses a highway series kit. i'm sure it can be adapted to a mopar . give then a call and see what they say.
 
Just spoke to American Autowire. All their Harness including the Highway series are GM color coded. Also, their Harness does not support the externally regulated alternators.

Very nice to talk too but since I don't know what I am doing I am still not sure what direction I am going.

Thanks!
 
ahhh can't be that hard. be nice to goto a gm 1 wire alt. there are brackets for that too i believe. and the colors can't be a bad thing. just get a good wire diagram and work it out. if you have no idea what your doing you may be better off just getting a full stock harness and plug and play it ot pay someone to do it.


oh and the shop says the way the american auto wire wires attach into the fuse box is better then the others too.
 
I appreciate abodyjoe's comments.
I was impressed with my phone conversation with Ron Francis, when I emailed some questions I got answered immediately. I liked their catalog, there is some good information in it.
They appear to be a smaller company than Painless, and personally I like to work with small companies.
Scuba0331 why dont you give a call to Ron Francis and ask for their manual.
After you look through it give them a call, then please let me know what you think
thank you
George
 
I have an American auto wire kit for the aspen, I haven't put it in yet but from the looks of it it will be a snap. The wires are also labeled every 3 in, painless I think is every 5 in and the coating on the auto wire kit are fire resistant. The other reason I used the auto wire kit is everything plugs into the fuse box so you don't have to have a ton of wires sitting around while you do each section.
 
I've installed EZ wire, Painless and Ron Francis wiring kits in streed rods. First of all, none of them are factory style, they will all require some fabrication. My opinion is EZ wire is the best value. GXL wire and a very compact fuse panel. (21 ckt mini fuse style). I think all of them offer some variation using the 80's style GM fuse panel. It's very large and awkward to mount. Ron Francis used to offer a beautiful panel in a stainless steel box, but it was a PITA to wire and it was difficult to dress the wires properly. Never was happy with the results. I don't think it makes any difference if the wire is labelled every 3" or 5", all of them label the wire with the function and that is very handy.
 
I am following this thread pretty close as I hope to be doing my wiring later this winter or spring. Has anyone salvaged a power distribution box from the junkyard and used it under the hood? As a central place for headlight and other accessory relays and such it seems like a good idea?
C
 
GeorgeGerhard said:
I appreciate abodyjoe's comments.
I was impressed with my phone conversation with Ron Francis, when I emailed some questions I got answered immediately. I liked their catalog, there is some good information in it.
They appear to be a smaller company than Painless, and personally I like to work with small companies.
Scuba0331 why dont you give a call to Ron Francis and ask for their manual.
After you look through it give them a call, then please let me know what you think
thank you
George
Click to expand...

I have spoken too and emailed Ron Francis. They do not have a manual to send you like Painless. Here is the Response I got from Ron a few Months ago.

You made my answer easy. The painless "book" of instructions is, I think, about 40 pages of lookup tables and text? Notice that cover has about 6-10 part numbers that the same instructions cover or attempt to cover. RFW kits have 2 pages of general guide lines, like where and how to mount the fuse panel and other helpful hints. The actual instructions are not printed until the kit is made so we can direct your attention to the exact components you have. We only include information for what you told us you have, nothing else. It takes the confusion out and leaves you more comfortable. Wiring should not be a chore, but fun. This dramatically reduces the amount of instructions and makes it easy.

We give you a single page of instructions for each section of the car.
Instead of a HUGE ball of wires from Painless where everything is attached to the fuse box already, we allow you to install a couple circuits at a time meaning you have maybe 4 or 5 wires in your hands instead of this huge bundle of poorly printed wires. Talk about intimidating when you open a box, everything is attached in their bundle. Our printing is much clearer too read as we are the only ones to hot stamp them that is easy to find on the wire and understand. We invented the printed wire, custom made kits and the
whole process. Others just make cheap imitations. We also supply a color
wiring diagram of the whole car for reference. Many guys wire our kits by reading the wires and never look at the instructions. Each of our kits has a serial number so you can get lifetime support on your purchase. No other company use serial numbers as they just ship a box of wires. Ours is made to order. MUCH easier, believe me.

And then you have my email address should you have a problem. Who can you talk to anywhere else? Also notice the quick reply time that I give my customers? No waiting days.
Hope this helps
Ron
 
abodyjoe said:
ahhh can't be that hard. be nice to goto a gm 1 wire alt. there are brackets for that too i believe. and the colors can't be a bad thing. just get a good wire diagram and work it out. if you have no idea what your doing you may be better off just getting a full stock harness and plug and play it ot pay someone to do it.


oh and the shop says the way the american auto wire wires attach into the fuse box is better then the others too.
Click to expand...

I would love to reuse the stock wiring but it was pretty hacked up when I got the car. Especially the dash.

I have never rewired a car but I do have some individuals that will be helping me who have gone through the process. I guess I want to make sure I can do as much as I can in case the assistance is limited. Due to schedules and what not I don't want to burden anbody with my rewire job.

The one individual who is going to assist me is a GM Mechanic and a wiring genius so any kit that is GM color coded may not be an issue at all. But, like I said just in case assistance is limited I want to be able to do as much as I can by myself.

I have done a lot of research so I will add as much to this thread as I can.

Here's another wiring system to throw into the loop http://www.isispower.com/!

To many choices.

Thanks Everybody.
 
I hope at this point nearly everyone uses the crosslink wire known as SXL, GXL and TXL depending on the insulation tickness. There are some who don't As far as printing, the 3 and 5 inches is not a factor. What is a factor is that we hot stamp it where everyone else's is much more difficult to read. Don't compare two wires sittig on a bench, compare them by looking at a bundle and see how much easier it is to clearly read ours. We ar Ron Francis Wiring still have the Stainless fuse box and we also have a new ACCESS panel made with 18 inches of wire that allows you to pull the fuse box out to the floor area to check a fuse. Notice I didn't say replace a fuse because with RFWing, you shouldn't blow any fuses if the components at the ends of the wires are in good condition. Hope this helps Ron Francis myself
 
I installed the Ron Francis system 3 years ago... Easy and no issues whatsoever... I am a backyard mechanic only, with no formal training .

And this is NOT a paid endorsement..
 
scuba0331 said:
Here's another wiring system to throw into the loop http://www.isispower.com/!
Click to expand...

I've got an ISIS kit and it's awesome. Going to make installation a breeze. The only two downfalls are you really have to think through what you want the system to do because that affects how you wire it up, and the price. I organized a group buy at pro-touring.com and we got a smoking deal. Sweet kit though, absolutely state-of-the-art.
 
ok i just came from the shop i was talking about and i relayed poor information.... he says ron francis kits are decent. and thats what he would use if he couldn't use the american auto wire kit. he says its the painless that are real cheap wire. also said that the american auto wire kit would be cake to use on a mopar. you just need a good stock wire diagram for your car. we were talking about doing my dart. if i do we will use a highway 22 kit.

sorry for the misinformation there.
 
swisswill said:
I've got an ISIS kit and it's awesome. Going to make installation a breeze. The only two downfalls are you really have to think through what you want the system to do because that affects how you wire it up, and the price. I organized a group buy at pro-touring.com and we got a smoking deal. Sweet kit though, absolutely state-of-the-art.
Click to expand...


its a neat kit. way too pricey in my opinion but if you got a good goup buy price thats cool. i'm curious as to how it performs once in the car. not that io think anything is bad about it but i want to see real world feedback before i drop that kind of coin.
 
I think some explanation is necessary to help you guys understand. There are "REPRODUCTIONS" of the factory wiring. They look and preform just like the stock wiring. They include the poorly designed parts like the fuse box that rusted and the firewall connector that failed. I started my Career running jumpers past bad Mopar connecters in the 1970's.
Ron Francis wiring is far from Junk. Anyone who says that has certainly not used our products. If you insist you only want a reproduction, then we are not the right company.

What we make is a high quality product that will last forever. In fact we support the product forever by putting a serial number on the side of the fuse box of reference 10 years or more from now. We still answer questions about kits we make 30 years ago. We also offer 100% quality assured so that you can return it if it does not meet your expectations. I can tell you in the 10 years we have offered that, we have had about 5 come back. All were because the customer thought they were getting a reproductions which I have already told you we do not make. I guess they couldn’t see the full size color photos in our catalog or something.

I hope this helps, as wiring is an important purchase. You know how bad the original wiring got, and you need to buy something that won’t end up the same way from moisture if your car sits a lot (or not)
Happy new year,
Ron
 
So painless wiring is a "pain"? Lol. I used their TPI engine harness kit for my 92 camaro and I had to hack and lengthen all wires. I'd never deal with them again.
 
I used EZWire in my Dart. If you are rewiring completely the instructions they give are great. Your only area of concern is the wiper wiring and even with a achematic for your car its a trial and error to get them going. Mine was relatively easy since I used a Jeep tilt column which has the same pinout as the GM style so all I needed was the proper connectors. Still a PITA with the wipers but they are working ok now.

Larry
 
Well I am about to start my wiring with the Ron Francis kit. So far not very impressed with the techinical support. I was missing an instruction sheet with one of the bags and asked to get a new one. No problem they sent it. Then I noticed that there is no wiring for the heater motor. So I asked why and they said because there are so many variations in wiring (wtf).

So I asked if I could have someone go through each bag with me to ensure I have all of the parts so they said "NO". They said if I dont' trust the engineering in their product then send it back. I was like "wtf". I said you are pretty arrogant when all I am asking for is an inventory to ensure I have everything. I am paying somebody to help me and don't want them to be standing around should it be missing something. It was already missing the instruction sheet. Sorry I was trying to be efficient with my time, money and respectful of my mechanics time.

Should I send it back? It is packaged very well but dang what's going to happen when I have a technical question?
 
Send back the Ron Francis Kit. Let them know it was their attitude and not the engineering that led to your sending it back.

The customer is always right!


John B.
 
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