Tidying up my wiring

[Rory's Dad]

The wiring under my scuttle is a pig's breakfast.  It wasn't that good to begin with and I've overlaid it with layers and layers of stuff just plonked in on top of it.  Sorting it out will be my winter project.

None of my switches are illuminated - they are rubber covered toggle switches.  All the illumination sockets from the original Westield loom are still tucked in behind the dash.  I've 4 choices - 1) leave them as they are, 2) wrap them in insulating tape and bind them onto the main loom, 3) cut the sockets off, sleeve the wires with heatshrink and then bind them into the main loom again or 4) finally (and most dangerously) slit the main loom pull out the offending wires and sockets, tidy it up and then resleeve the loom.

The other thing I need to do is try and get rid of all the odd connecting blocks littered around.  I thought I might try and rationalise all these by joining the various supplies and earths etc together.  On the Westfield loom you can see they are all joined together somehow in a neat little parcel.  It was on here or some other message board that someone had twisted these wires together, stuffed them into a short lenth of microbore copper tubing, filled it with solder and covered it in heatshrink.  That seems to me like a good idea but where to find some short lenghts of microbore tubing??  Are there any plumbers on here, professional or otherwise, who could kindly find me some hits in the bottom of their van, in a box or lying about under the floor??.  Happy to pay in beer tokens or whatever.  PMs awaited!!

The loom on my (previous) new build was lovely and neat and ended up with the ecu and most of the relays on an aluminim plate above the passender's knees whereas mine is just cable tied to the bar that runs along behind the dash and quite a lot of the relays just dangle down.  Has anyone got any bright ideas about how to neaten it all up??  I am going to buy some of that fabric sleeving to help with the job.  Endless digital photos will also be needed to stop me getting lost.

As always I await your responses with thanks - a link to a website called rewiring for dummies would be good too!

Rory's Dad

[BigRuss]

Hi Rory's Dad.

I've just redone my entire dash wiring.

It's not based on the standard westfield loom, but hopefully my findings will help.

I used split locking convoluted tubing from Polevolt to hold it all together replacing heatshrink which is what it was before:

http://www.polevolt.co.uk/acatalog/Split_Convoluted_Tubing.html

Its split so wires can go in easily, and it holds them all in place and protected. Plus there is the advantage that you can add more later when you forget one. (I always do) There are T-pieces and Y pieces and different sizes for more or less wires. Plus it wasn't too expensive.

[Rory's Dad]

Thanks Big Russ - good advice.

Anyone else??

Rory's Dad

[Doug Dastardly]

The loom on my (previous) new build was lovely and neat and ended up with the ecu and most of the relays on an aluminim plate above the passender's knees whereas mine is just cable tied to the bar that runs along behind the dash and quite a lot of the relays just dangle down.  Has anyone got any bright ideas about how to neaten it all up??

Why can't you just do the hinged plate above the passanger footwell?

Doug

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

I've just done the hinged plate thing while I had the scuttle off to fit the windscreen. Much neater solution.

As for the wiring, I wouldn't personally remove connectors if you don't need to. When I first built the car with aeroscreen, I had no plans ever to add a screen; thank goodness I didn't simplify the loom as I had considered at the time. Five years later, I've just added a screen and dug out the wiper and washer connectors I so carefully secured out of the way years ago.