Wiring harness: make or buy?

Hello. I have recently rescued my '56 CJ5 from looong term storage and she needs a little work. Among other things, I need to rewire her as there is just an absolute rat's nest of wires, some of which I know are dead, some are live, some I just can't tell and a bunch are rotting away. (Someone rewired parts of her a bunch of years ago but didn't pull the old stuff out.) Anyway, I would like to know what your opinions are on how to proceed. I am relatively new to auto work but have wiring experience in other fields. Should I purchase the $200 wiring harness and take the easy way through or save some $ and build my own? How difficult is it to build one? If purchasing is the better option, whose do you recommend?

Thanks for any help. Happy New Year to all.

 

personally i bought mine. but several members have made their own. if i were to do it again i would take the challenge of making my own.

 

I'd buy the harness, unless you're up to the challenge. To me, it seems WAAAAAAYYY easier.

 

I'm doing my own. But I like doing that sort of thing.
The kits are worth the money if you dont want to tackle it yourself.

 

2 words, EZ Wire! Enough said.

 

I'm building my own so I can do it how I want it with soldered connections and the dash has a plug for all the wires for easy removal to work on it. Not hard just time consuming

 

depends on how much time you what to invest in harness. I have the painless kit, am waiting till I get a new tub to install it. spent about 14 hours in current hacked harness (po's work and some of my early attempts) and it is still not complete. (no lights or turn signals).

 

I made my own harness. It's really not very hard to do, and now it's done the way I want it to be. The biggest thing is that by taking the time to do it myself, I now know where each and every wire goes, which makes troubleshooting a whole lot easier down the road.

The best tip that I can give is to unbolt the dash and lean it forward to do the wiring. I didn't do it that way, and I'm still sore from it.

 

Well, I'm not put off by wiring or electrical, so I'd probably try to repair the OEM harness. Not a lot of circuits in a CJ. Butt connectors, some heatshrink tubing, scrounged wire and the original wiring diagram should suffice. Buying a complete replacement harness and rewiring everything seems like the nuclear option...

 

when i got my 69cj, the only wiring it had was the engine bay/ charging and ignition. i took the challenge to complete the rest.im using a fuse box out of an 80s saburu, whitch is more than sufficient. the rear end is done, now i have the front. in northern wisconson, its to cold to work outside, so looking forward to working on it this spring. the cj has a 231 buick, t14, dana18, dana30 with disc br, amc20, new fiberglass tub, power steering, 4in susp, 2 in body. however its not done yet.good luck with your wiring job whitch ever rout you take.dennis

 

Like Dennis, I cheated a little too. I adapted a loom from an early Bronco. Was very simple to do. Very inexpensive to find a compatable loom from an early vehicle at a local U Pick yard. The thing I liked about using a donar loom is it gives you multable extra fused lines to use for accesseries, and the fues box construction. Unfortunatly, I'm thinking of rewiring again using a loom that employs spade style fuses and a firewall plug, allowing me to unplug the outer loom from the pass. compartment.

 

Agreed. Much simpler than figgering it out on your own, AND you'll have extra circuits for stuff like lights, radio, etc, etc. WITH FUSES!

EZ Wiring is well worth it.

 

found this on ebay not much less than list tho.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/e...item=7944668173&category=6763&sspagename=WDVW

mcruff, which ez model did you buy? and how were the instructions?

 

Over the years I have replaced 90% of the wires on my Jeep. I added a later headlight switch that has hook up for dome lights and fading gauge lights. Also added one of the later CJ ignition switches that uses spade terminals on the back instead of threaded posts. I try to stick to a factory wire routing pattern wherever possible. I had to remove a bunch of wires when I got it, and did a second major rewiring just recently, added a lot of male/female OEM type connections with the OEM plastic connectors that I cut from old wiring harnesses. Everything is heat shrinked and a lot is soldered.
If I had it to do over again, I would have bought a kit just to get a good supply of high quality wire, in different colors, to have as a starting point. Picking apart an old harness trying to get a piece a certain length and color is time consuming and frustrating. Also a fuse box is nice. I still don't have a fusebox per se, but all my fuses are changed over to the newer flat plastic style.

I got a deal on a bulk bag of umpco clamps on ebay. These are the metal clamps that are rubber cushioned. Used them all over my Jeep. They come in regular metal (RUST), stainless and aluminum. Mine are the aluminum. The mounting hole is for a #8 screw, but the aluminum is easily drilled for up to a 7/16" bolt. Very handy for keeping thing neat.

 

Thank you all for your input. After reading your responses, doing a little more research, and REALLY taking a look at what's going on under the dash, I think I'm going with the kit. Although making a harness is probably very "do-able", for my first time through a project like this, I'm thinking I should take all the help I can get.

As for the actual kit, EZ Wiring's EZ 12 seems like the right choice since I don't have (and don't ever envision adding) any extras. If you don't think I'm making the right choice, please let me know.

Thanks again for all your input. I'll report back with my progress and with other questions as they come up.

 

I bought the ez-12 circuit, the instructions are over simplified to a degree, the best thing to do is spend the afternoon looking over your jeep thoroughly to get familiar with the wiring, then spend an evening looking over the instructions and figure out in your head and take notes as to what you want to do, after that a cheap test meter would help. I am the one that listed this link on here more than 5 years ago, so my kit is there original style all black wires labeled every 5" as to what they are for, the newer kits are colored and there actually cheaper by about $30 than what I paid for mine. They are also a small family owned business which from what I can remember very good customer service as I called back several times to talk to a gentleman with questions.