Rewiring a 72 Z??

[bski224]

Doing a complete wiring harness on my 72Z, Little intimadated by this as I have never done a wiring harness before, I purchased the ez2wire kit and it looks pretty complete. My car is not orig by any means so factory gauges etc... were not important.

Question is where do I start?? Im going to take out ALL wires and take pics of specifics of the orig hook ups. Any other suggestions!!!??

[ErikLS2]

First thing is to try not to be intimidated, although I know wiring a whole car can be. If you can wire up one circuit, you can wire up all of them. Just do one circuit at a time and start with the easier ones first and try not to look at all those wires at the same time if you can.

Install the fuse block and then pick a circuit and work your way out from there. I would initially just get the wires laid out in their basic location before you connect anything. Inevitably you'll discover you wanted a harness routed slightly differently than you initially lay it out.

Make sure the harness is protected with that plastic conduit around any sharp edges or where it could wear through. Make sure there is no tension on the harness near connectors and that the harness is secured enough to not move around. It wouldn't hurt to add a few restraints in areas where the harness hangs loose or flops around some. A little dielectric grease on connectors that could get wet will help prevent corrosion too.

Once everything is connected, test every circuit and gently wiggle and tug on the harness and connectors to make sure you don't have any poor connections. Also make sure all your ground connections are to bare metal. The ground side is as important as the rest of it.

Good luck and let us know how it goes!

[bski224]

Cool thanks!! Is there any way to test a circuit after I do it?? I.E after say I do rear tail lights how can I check them??

[OhioProto]

hey, first post quick intro...scott from ohio......former tech guy at a somewhat well know 12V aftermarket supplier, and all around 12V junkie...

yes, a mess of spaghetti layin' on the floor can be intimidating, but if you take your time and do the setup one by one, it gets easier.....if you have the time/space, i suggest placing some plywood(on horses or whatever) near the car so that you can kind of mock everything up and see it in real space before taking it to the car.......for example(if your harness has the freedom for it), you're going to have quite a bit of wiring near the drivers side of the dash, perhaps mounting the block closer to the glovebox/pass side....you also have a few moving parts in that area you'll want to avoid as much as possible(pedals, steering collumn, e-brake).....once you have the location for the block, route the pos. to the battery(don't connect it yet)....in your tail light example, you'll wire the switch next, then run to the back of the car....once that's done, you can double check everything, THEN connect the battery.....your one circuit should fire right up as planned......disconnect the battery and move on to the next one.......how to specifically test A circuit depends a bit on a few variables, like how the switch is wired, if there are relays, etc.

[bski224]

Very good points, Proto!! Thanks and welcome, I'm new to this site as well and its GREAT!!!!