What ever you do, don ´t wire your ride like this...

[Mefirst]

Well I had to bite the bullet.. I removed the gauge dash to start the work of rewire the dash harness.. This has been a job I haven't looked forward to doing, but then again I don't want my ride to go up in flames either..

This is what attacked me when I removed the gauge dash.. (Click picture link)

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a225/Gimmegimmies/PB190020.jpg

Well I'm not intimidated yet, I knew that it would look like this.. But then I started to investigate closer.. The wires I checked out were a total nightmare. I really have to give it to the previous owner who has managed to pull this off.. I found wires that had been cut, then connected together with connectors using like 4 different gauge size wire.. Well thank God I had the Electrical diagram printed out, with out it I would have been totally lost.. I started to check the wires from the headlight switch and dimmer switch, worked my way to the bulkhead connector, changed out the burn wires and sorted out the rats nest mess.. This is a time consuming task. I only pulled about 5 new wires, but this took about 4 hours to get done, reason was that first I had to figure out how the hell the previous owner had pulled the wires, where are they connected, etc.. Then check the diagram how they should go and then one wire at a time redo this part of the dash harness.

The more I looked the more I was baffled with the fact that the car hadn't caught fire a long time ago cause of this f..ed up electrical work, the wiring in my ride just goes against al logic and is just a big disaster area.. I just don't understand how the electrics can even work..

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a225/Gimmegimmies/PB190018.jpg

In this pic you also see that going through a dash harness ain't the most easy thing to do, specially when a wire starts in one colour and along the way changes colours 8 times..

What do you think about this really nicely wired light switch connector??

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a225/Gimmegimmies/PB190019.jpg

The battle to conquer the electrical goblins in my Charger continues...

/Tom

[Johnny SixPack]

Hey Tom, wanna rewire my Charger next?  

Good luck, man!

[Mefirst]

Hey Tom, wanna rewire my Charger next? 

Good luck, man!

Well why not, just have allot of beer in the cooler.. and I did renew my tetanus shot before starting the work on my ride, you can never be to carefull

[Charger4404spd]

Tom I gotta another idea. Drink a few cold ones......then a few more, crank up Skynard and rip all the dash wiring out. Oh, be sure to disconnect the battery first.
Then get on the phone and order a new dash harness!

After that, we'll work on the ignition......hehe!

[greenpigs]

Make sure you change out of your dress before working on the dash, then go for a new harness as your gages and ignition could use the update to new and larger wire. Now I think the larger wire would work to cut down on heat, but you know better than to take what I say as correct.

[G Force]

Are you going to replace all the harnesses with new or repair what you have?
I found the best way to repair wires is to solder the connections andheat shrink tubing over it. I have ad problens with the compression type  and mecahnical type connectors. I also replaced any of the wrong color wires by splicing in the correct color and guage wires.
I also had the notorious bulk head  connection problems..

Good luck.

[Mefirst]

G Force*

Im not changing out the whole electrical system yet, Im just cleaning out the harness so it will work over the summer, my plan is to redo the whole electrical system next winter..

/Tom