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Need your 2 cents on wiring

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wolf88

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So I am working on my 83 K5 blazer and I look under the dash on the driver side near the fuse box and notice that the wiring is a bit of a mess.... Looks like someone had a tow control.. couple splices here and there.. any way my question is this should I take the time to rewire it and go through it or just clean her up a bit and call her good??? What do y'all think?
 
Main thing is find what the wires are going to and if they are still powering anything. If not clean up the wiring and delete the extra wires. First and Formost disconnect the battery. Never know what you'll fry messing with wiring.
 
Take your time to make sure you've cleaned it up right. Any hacked wiring indicates the PO wasn't doing things right, and that will always be a potential source of random ghostly issues.

Not a big fan of splices in any event, but sometimes there isn't much choice, particularly with the limited earlier fuse panels. Normally there is a better way to do it though. :)
 
dyeager535 said:
Take your time to make sure you've cleaned it up right. Any hacked wiring indicates the PO wasn't doing things right, and that will always be a potential source of random ghostly issues.

Not a big fan of splices in any event, but sometimes there isn't much choice, particularly with the limited earlier fuse panels. Normally there is a better way to do it though. :)
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Agreed. I'm a big fan of the Add-A-Circuit connections, and if possible, a soldered connection when splicing wires.
 
Wiring - Like rust.... the more you "fix", the more you'll find.

If you lack the proper skills, and its not causing issues, leave it alone.
Or, better yet....Take a test light, and start seeing what open wires, if any, are hot.

I had about 17 in my K5... I just tore it all out, and rewired it.

This new C/10 just got a full rewire.
It was still factory, but the wires were too old to trust.
 
solder and heat shrink make nice splices. They look good and will hold up much better than crimp connectors. Make sure the wiring is tied together with rubber tape (not sticky electrical tape) which only sticks to its self, split loom, or even just zip ties. You don't want the wiring to rub anything and short out and you want to keep strain off the electrical connectors at each device.

I did some electrical on my truck that was not great. I have learned to do a better job over the years and now I have cleaned up a lot of the wiring on my 79C20 in prep to put the engine and trans back in. It can take a lot of time to do it right, but bad or corroded connections suck.
 
I cant speak highly enough of GOOD routing, and bundle support.

Been there. Done that. Fried the Alternator.
 
And if doing a fair number of connections, crimping (with good crimp components, not the plastic coated junk) is far faster than soldering. I don't mind soldering, it used to be my sole electrical fix, but it's time consuming. If crimping is done properly, at the very least no worse than solder. Crimper is about $15, components are a couple of bucks.
 
dyeager535 said:
And if doing a fair number of connections, crimping (with good crimp components, not the plastic coated junk) is far faster than soldering. I don't mind soldering, it used to be my sole electrical fix, but it's time consuming. If crimping is done properly, at the very least no worse than solder. Crimper is about $15, components are a couple of bucks.
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Agreed, I used to solder EVERYTHING but then I bought some good crimpers and started going that route and I've never had a problem. For stuff inside I just use decent ones with the plastic cover but if it's outside I use the all metal terminals then heat shrink over them.

 
Since im a postwhore.... :whistle:

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Nice wiring guys. Mine is similar, but the component are mounted to my inner fender, inside a box, so the surface is curved. I should have used a punch to start my holes to mount the components, so the drill bit wouldn't walk. It isn't perfectly straight, but I am happy with how it turned out. I managed to fit 10 pounds of crap..........I mean wiring, into a 5 pound box. I want to get some pics up, but I am not done with the other wiring in the engine bay. Maybe I'll get some just before the engine goes in and then a completed shot.

It has taken much longer than I expected to make my wiring secure and neat. In the past I left slack everywhere and just bunched it up. I tried to do away with that this time. Hopefully it won't bite me in the ass. I am getting much faster at soldering and heat shrinking, so I could extend wires if I have to.

I did find some nice headlight plugs at autozone today. My old ones were just molded plastic. The factory plugs had gone bad. The new ones have rubber boots and some small split loom coming off them. It should help keep the water off the terminals.

I have a set of ratcheting crimpers with replaceable jaws. You can find many different dies for them. They work pretty good for crimping, but some insulated connectors do not crimp well with them. I have an old pair of GB brand (lower end tools from home depot) red handled linemans plyers that have a crimper built in. It does quite well, but the jaw is very wide. I also have a dedicated pair of crimping pliers that may also be GB but I didn't get them out this time. I used a lot of crimp on terminals, but I tried to keep the number of splices with them low. Solder and heat shrink is just better. The factory splices are still in perfect shape after 34 years and they were done with crimp connectors and then soldered.
 
My view is this. The less extra connectors the better. There will be a lot less chance of failure. So instead of extending a 6 inch piece with two butt connectors I replace The whole wire if possible to get rid of one extra connector that can fail. I need to redo a lot Of Crap wiring I did as a kid when I didn't know any better on my blazer. Some I rigged because of po dumb stuff. But looking at it now that in older I may not have done Much better than him except maybe roughting things better back when I first started rewiring. I'd like to do what beast did and get all new wiring and redo it all. Then there won't be any question of any bad wiring. Someday. ....
 
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