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I posted this question in my restoration blog, but not everyone reads those so I am posting it here as well. I removed the wire harness from my car because I heard of how bad peoples have been. The ends of the harness that were in the engine compartment are terrible. The parts that were protected under the tape look great. I can bend them and they do not disintegrate in my hands. The wires under the dash are faded, but are not cracked except for one where it was bent sharply at some time. The terminals and switches appear clean as well.

What should I do? I was going to replace all of the wires myself, making my own harness. That is more complicated than I originally thought it would be.

I could buy a new 6v harness of modern wires for around $250. I'm pretty cheap and don't want to spend that much if I don't have to. Also, I do not like the looks of the modern fuse box.

I could reuse my old harness and repair the damaged parts of the wires with modern wire. I would lose the original look, but I know this will not be a show car either.

I could cut out the good parts of the wires that were under the tape and replace them with modern wire. I would then take the good original wire and use that to repair the ends of the harness, giving me the original look once the harness is retaped and the modern wire is covered. That would be more work, but look more accurate. I would be worried about the old wire now being exposed to the elements under the hood to deteriorate more rapidly, but I guess it wouldn't be too hard to replace again later if necessary.

What do you guys think? Anyone done the "repair the harness" scenario with success or am I just asking for trouble? Of course, if I reuse wires, I will test them for problems before reinstalling.

Thanks for your input!

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In addition to my comments on your blog, the one limiting factor with modern wire is lack of color choice unless you buy at a specialty place--which gets expensive and may require quantity. With only 5 or 6 colors usually available, it gets confusing quickly unless you take pains to mark carefully and make sure no labels come off.

Big Kev used a universal/generic street rod harness/fuse block on his Clipper project, and seemed to think that it represented a savings. I will say this: monkeying around with the old one is not worth it. You would be amazed at how much better things work with a new harness vs the hit n' miss nature of the old harness, even with band-aids on it.

I just finished the band-aid solution to the dangerously frayed wiring under the hood on the '50. I considered the same thing you did (splice the modern wiring upstream of a section of reasonably good flexible original wire to maintain the original look). Unfortunately, when I unwrapped the bundle I found all the wire was stained dark brown so there was no point going that route. I ended up just splicing/soldering new modern wire into the bundle and re-wrapping with tape. The new wire certainly doesn't look original but then again, it's a lot safer than a bunch of bare wires under the hood (it was really pretty bad). I do intend to put in a new harness someday but this will do for the time being so I can get the '41 project underway.

The engine in this car was blowing a lot of oil into the engine compartment which may account for the staining of the wires. With the new rings and removal of the mouse food cache from the road draft tube, there is no longer an oil film all over everything.

Edit: With the wiring out of the car... I'd bite the bullet and get a new harness.

If you want to go the repair the wiring route you can get new original looking wire from vendors. It comes in the colors that will match your wiring and in various gauges to suit the need.

I learned a neat trick to make modern crimp terminals look like the kind that were used in vintage cars. Take a modern crimp terminal, remove the plastic sleeve, strip the insulation on the wire back a short distance, solder the terminal on the wire, cut a short length of shrink wrap and place it over the terminal, and using a heat source shrink it over the terminal and wire. It looks original, and you do not have those ugly plastic sleeves showing. Some people prefer to crimp the terminal on the wire, but I like to solder as I think it provides a better connection and looks more authentic. Of course if you want to really look authentic, the wire vendors also sell the solder on terminals.

(o{I}o)

I used a double layer of shrink wrap on the actual soldered splices and ensured the splices were staggered so none were actually next to each other in the bundle.

I removed, cleaned, and re-soldered all the original connectors onto the new wire and finished it off as JW suggests with a short length of shrink wrap over the base of the connector. Re-using the connectors was time consuming but not particularly difficult. Except for the bright colors of the modern wiring, the finished product looks good.

I still keep a fire extinguisher handy in any case.

Thanks for the input guys. I'm going to try to make my own harness. It will be a lot of work, but will give me something to do when it is cold out.