American Autowire's Classic Update Kit - Ridding The Rat's Nest

Remove the tape before activating the heat shrink. You can use a heat gun, or a lighter in a pinch. Just don't touch the flame to the wire.

Cutting
First, you'll need to figure the length of the sheath you'll need. Be sure to account for how much the sleeving might compress to accept a larger diameter. It's possible to cut while it's on the wire but it's much more difficult. Special hot-blade cutting machines are sold for this material but it's not worth getting for a single job. We just whipped it with the flame from a lighter to ball the edges up a little bit. It will still unravel eventually, but it will hold up enough to get it on the wire.

The first wire group out of the box is the frontend wiring harness. The factory hole used is rectangular, but the American Autowire supplied grommet fits perfectly.

The kit includes the plastic headlight connector housing and electrical connector ends. The low- and high-beam lead needs to go into the left-hand connector then out again to go to the right side. The black is the ground.

If you don't have the factory harness to reference the placement of these three wires, American Autowire has a handy photo to make it foolproof.

This wire group is for power accessories you may have added to your car. They are labeled for power windows, locks, fuel pump, battery power, and accessory power. They can be used for just about anything within the fuses' amperage bounds. Since the ignition-gated fuel power was the only item from this group we needed, we removed it and installed it into one of the blank receptacles in the rear body harness. It's a good idea to throw a couple extra wires in this bunch to use if something new comes up later in the build.

This is by far the longest stretch of wire in the whole place. It needs to run through the kick panel, along the doorsill valley, over the rear wheelhouse, then to its destination by the tail panel. Here you can see how we zip tied the bunch of wires every 1.5 inches.

Most cars have a channel built under the doorsill scuff plate to keep wires from being damaged. We ran our wiring the same way as the factory, seen here.

Here's where we stand at the end of the day with the dash. The spool of wires lying over the turn signal switch are all for the gauge panel. Next month we will be installing a set of modern gauges in a billet housing from JME Enterprises.