Wiring Mess - 10/02/2005

Time to tackle the wiring harness. It is butchered and needs repairing quite badly.



Alternator wiring (blue and greyish wires go to voltage regulator terminals, brown end is a glob connecting several wires together) and temperature idiot light sender (green wire). Looks like a fire occurred here as the wiring to alternator is one big chunk of melted wires and insulation. The house-quality wire-nuts everywhere on the harness makes me REALLY appreciate the previous owners.



The ignition (purple) and battery (red) connections to the solenoid\starter area.



AC plug (two prong plug), transmission kickdown solenoid plug (black with orange stripe), ignition coil wire (yellow with fork connector), and oil idiot light sending line (blue).



Inside harness and voltage regulator plugs. Note the purple and red wires that have been hacked apart to power something somewhere (using the electrical cord from a generic house lamp). Probably used to hotwire the car since this car is pre-steering lock and jumpering these wires will turn the starter on.



This lovely length of wire was fished through the frame all the way to the back to power the tail-light harness used on the trailer hitch. Would have been a ton easier to just splice the connectors already back there, but THAT makes too much sense. I really don't know what these wires would be used for or go to in the engine compartment anyway...



Underhood view sans harness.



Underhood on the passenger side.



Where the harness plugs in. Check it out! Nice to see the older style plug. Very few circuits on this harness compared to the later cars. Quite simple. Headlight\horn harness plugs in to the right, the circuit breaker for the rear window motor is that two prong piece on the right with the two wires. Not sure if this is factory or not as it looks like something was removed from below the wiper motor where the wires go back in to the car.



Headlight removed. Still no fix for the broken headlight adjuster screw. None of the aftermarket generic pieces fit this thing, so we'll have to get REAL creative.

One repaired harness later and I'm still not satisfied with the soldering job. I'll probably just end up replacing the harness at a later date since I don't feel like dealing with it much right now.

Back to '67 Catalina

Last updated October 2nd, 2005