Im going to be going about rewiring my car. As far as the general light duty things(tail lights and such) what guage wire are they? im going out tomorrow to get my supplies and i need to know. im thinking 18 or 20 but i cant recall.
(i know there are heavier wires on the car like the starter and AC power, i have those under control, just need to know the rest)
-Matt
If you are going about racing style of wiring, go buy the painless wiring harness and begin from there, otherwise the fsm will have the details, if not, I suggest looking at the harness itself because it ranges quite a bit in the mainstreams of the harness. There are alot of Y splits where the gauge increases/decreases and alot of grounding work, so just by telling you the gauge you shouldnt buy just one kind, you need to presee how much of each you would need, at least 4 different gauges. This is a big project, good luck.
which painless harness would i be looking for? im looking to redo the ENTIRE car. going to do the engine and body harness. although there isnt as much to do with the engine harness
-Matt
btw…that harness there would be actually very easy for me to do, i just need the quage of wire to wire those things in. And I know everyone loves wiring:)
-Matt
that doesn’t look painless…
honestly if you know what your doing, and you know some tips you can do this really easy. Plus it helps having a FLUKE digital multimeter from work to help
-Matt
Go painless if you are going full out custom harness and don’t realy care for much of street legality.
If I were you, I’d work using the existing wiring and work from there.
yeah thats what im thinking of doing.
i just want to besically remove the un-used wires for accessories i dont have(power antenna rear wiper ac rear speakers etc etc and hardwire my headlights to solve this effin problem im having with them.
This is my street car btw. I dont think buying a completely custom chassis harness will keep the car dot spec
-Matt
you can get street legal harnesses from painless but you would have to integrate the stock switches in a lot of areas which would be more time consuming then just opening up the stock harness and removing unneccessary wires.
what is your goal for the car?
i mean, a painless will save you 10-20lbs in weight but its usually not worth it for a street car.
im trying to set my car up for street/track. I dont need the ammenities that most normal people would want(like ac) im driving with no rear interior at the moment and im planning on a ka-t to use as a powerplant
apex’i gt spec zaust tomorrow yay
-Matt
so as im sure you know airconditioning is all of two wires one going from the climate control box to the ecu and from the ecu to the compressor
now i know what you’re saying and I see where you’re coming from, but I just think you might want to re-consider since you’ll find it difficult when trying to wire up all the factory turn signals/wipers/ignition/hazard lights etc etc etc
just look at the factory service manuals and see what I mean
yeah, i know ac isnt much, but it was just an example… there are alot more things that i can remove than that.
anyways, thanks for your help
-Matt
I’ve done lots of car wiring myself, and ripping apart a few nissan harnesses those warnings about tees and splits is correct
my advice is if you want to redo it for weight reduction you won’t get much, for reliability I would suggest running a fat ground cable from a central source to everything individually as best you can outside the harness…
by that I mean, run several to the engine and tranny, a good one to the alternator bracket or body, and to where every ground strap from the harness is bolted to the body (such as beside/behind the seats, under the rear carpet, dashboard…)
a good ground will reduce the strain on your electrical system as you effectively reduce resistance, and a ground wire is safe in that you can scratch or pinch it at any time and you won’t short anything by touching it to the body
if you are hardcore I would start at the fusible links and work backwards, you will probably find you can cut a few of them or even transfer one wire from a tee directly to another fusible line and simplify it