anyone do a painless wring harness?

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65cudalover

65cudalover

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After the many electrical gremlins I am having it seems obvious my old wiring is no longer worth messing with. I am considering just cutting it all out and redoing with a painless harness. I am seeking advice/opinions from thers who may have done the same or consider doing it. I have a 65 cuda which is mechanically all new but it is having problems being reliable starting, running, lights ect. I am frustrated as want to drive it but not reliable enough to go get groceries!
 
I just finished mine and I will probably never do it again.I make a living fixing cars and took me about 80 hours.The kit was good just didnt come with all plugs.The directions was a little hard to make sense of but the tech help line was very very helpful
 
hi, i made my own looms up, mine was a mess, add ons, lives floating around going no where, ripped lot out, its the only way! good luck with it
 
I am in a wiring nightmare of my own, where the engine bay harness came from a different car when the previous owner was switching over to electronic ignition. They just grabbed the entire harness instead of just rewiring the appropriate things. For example, turn the key and the horn honks, honk the horn and the headlights come on. Just little things like that. :) I looked into the painless kit, and decided the budget wouldn't afford $500 for their harness, so I pulled all the plugs out of the bulkhead am tracing the wires and putting them in the right bulkhead spot and for the critical wires I'm running new wire.

Since the painless didn't come with plugs, did you acquire new plugs, or reuse the old ones?
 
Also look at ezwiring.com, for the money this look like what I'm going to get.
 
I just rewired my car with the Ron Francis wiring kit.
Very nicely laid out, you must read the instructions carefully, as many thing refer to General Mistakes vehicles
 
Just did my car with an American autowire kit. Nice kit. Comes with new headlight and highbeam switch along with the parts to rebuild your turn signal, marker lights ...etc sockets. All the basics are nice and straight forward ( I'm sure most kits are). I used the gm style trun signal plug that came with the kit. and put a heavy duty plug together for the ign switch. The other connectors we rebuilt. The entire system is protected by a 175 amp mega fuse. Also put in a battery disconnect (anti theft).Pretty easy to do but very time consuming. Every single wire has been replaced in my car. :). Finished it up Saturday at like 3:30pm and cruised it right to shore with my two kids. Ran flawless. Headlights are brighter then they ever have since I owned the car. Loving it. Should be nice and safe now.
 
I rewired the 66 valiant with a very good harness from a 79 dodge truck, used most of it, and surprisingly was pretty simple. just had to unclip the terminals from the 79 harness at the bulkhead connector and clip them into the valiant connector. but I also like wiring jobs too
 
I vote for the EZwiring kit. I have a 12 circuit mini fuse kit. It's very nice and everything is great quality...
 
I've done EZ twice and it really is pretty ...easy. As others mentioned, the instructions are spotty in places, and they don't apply specifically to your car, so some head-scratching will be required.

I also keep handy a general automotive wiring book- I have the Tex Smith book, but there are other good ones- for those moments when the instructions just aren't enough.
 
My friend that restores cars told me that he would never do a Painless kit again. To hard and poor instructions.
 
I did a Painless kit on my 1970 Duster and except for the Rally dash wiring I found it to be well laid out and labled. This was my first rewire job and had little problems. Just read the instructions first. To each his own just my thoughts.
 
Go with the EZ harness.It has markings on each wire stating what's it's for.Best to get a colored wiring diagram for your car off ebay easier to follow.Wiring is pretty straight foward and don't make it into a bigger job than it is.I wanted a very clean look so I hid all the wiring and electronis that I could.Check out the picture of my engine bay
 
I don't have alot of love for the Painfull Harness. To be honest and fair, I also haven't used on of theirs in years, so maybe they have improved upon the things I didn't like.

Those of you using the EZ kits, are they using proper gauge wire? I looked at the web site and notice that they are finally using color coded wiring, but it doesn't say anything about wire sizing.

I used to wire all of the custom jobs I did with the Enos kits, but have switched over to the American Autowire kits going on seven or eight years now. By far the best instructions I have seen. They are a General Mayhem based system, but it is very adaptable to any of the projects I have done. There are a few minor quirks to it that I try to change when doing upper end installs, nothing dramatic and nothing that takes away from the reliability of the system.
 
I used to wire all of the custom jobs I did with the Enos kits, but have switched over to the American Autowire kits going on seven or eight years now. By far the best instructions I have seen. They are a General Mayhem based system, but it is very adaptable to any of the projects I have done. There are a few minor quirks to it that I try to change when doing upper end installs, nothing dramatic and nothing that takes away from the reliability of the system.
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i went with their highway 22 kit for my dart. not bad at all to adapt to a mopar.
 
I'm now finding out after the fact of getting the Painless harness kit for a 73 Duster is becoming quite gruesome. My sticking point is wiring in the turn signal harness. The kit supplies a terminal that looks like it belongs on the steering column side of the connector. Why would I need to wire that side? It's already connected in the column. I'm missing something, any suggestions? I submitted the question to Painless, but always value multiple opinions and help, thanks guys!
 
Unless I miss my guess, they give you a GM style connector for your column to mate with the GM connector on their harness. Autowire does this also. I think it's because most aftermarket columns are based on the GM tilt and turnsignal setup.
 
Revhendo said:
Unless I miss my guess, they give you a GM style connector for your column to mate with the GM connector on their harness. Autowire does this also. I think it's because most aftermarket columns are based on the GM tilt and turnsignal setup.
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yea thatys what i was thinking. i went to the gm style for that reason. ididit and flaming fiver columns come with the gm connector. i know there are adapters to goto the chrysler style connector but i said screw it, the wires were in the same order going from one end of the connector to the other on both the stock connector and the gm style one.




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No Government Motor's terminals being installed here! J/K, but I believe you're right. Another bit of advice for anyone going down this road is, I purchased a service manual on cd-rom and that has been a life saver! It takes a long time, but so far, all connections have been correct (knock on wood) Thanks for all the help! It's definitely appreciated.

-JRod
 
JRod01 said:
No Government Motor's terminals being installed here! J/K, but I believe you're right. Another bit of advice for anyone going down this road is, I purchased a service manual on cd-rom and that has been a life saver! It takes a long time, but so far, all connections have been correct (knock on wood) Thanks for all the help! It's definitely appreciated.

-JRod
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i agree. most of the questions that are asked on this board can be answered with a service manual. everyone should have one if in this hobby. i also bought the laminated wire diagram from http://www.classiccarwiring.com/ it makes things a lot easier when maessing with any of the wires in your car.
 
abodyjoe said:
i agree. most of the questions that are asked on this board can be answered with a service manual. everyone should have one if in this hobby. i also bought the laminated wire diagram from http://www.classiccarwiring.com/ it makes things a lot easier when maessing with any of the wires in your car.
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FSM's are invaluable. I bought one for my Val when I first got her for a turn signal problem and have used it for so many other things since...
 
Thanks Abodyjoe , bought that wiring diagram , should come in handy , wiring is not my strong point . Chart should help
 
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