<VV> John's Post on wiring

[Tony Underwood]

At 12:37 hours 01/20/2005 -0500, Hank Kaczmarek wrote:
>All
>
>In all deference to Smitty and Clark,  I suppose until your car burns up, the
>attitude of "old is fine" is a sound one.
>



The trick here is to understand the difference between old and worn out,
and old but still serviceable.    If the wire harness is intact and not
rotted or fatigued or likewise damaged, replacing it with a new harness is
false economy.    

I've removed wire harnesses from parts Vairs which looked almost new, once
the dirt was cleaned off.    And anybody with any experience in electronics
and electrical systems should be able to tell the difference between useful
and useless wiring.     


Most wiring problems in cars are not the fault of the harness; the fault
lies with whoever compromised the wiring, either by cutting the harness
somewhere for whatever reason (nobody should ever have to *cut* a car wire
harness) or by defeating strain reliefs or passthru  grommets or likewise
unintentionally causing other physical damage to the wiring.   


The wiring on my 44 year old Vair is still fine.   No crumbling insulation,
no cracks, no broken corroded connections.   I expect it to last onward.   

Then again, I've seen harnesses with blistered wiring that burned inside
the tape wrap and got hot enough to fuse the insulation into a solid rope
of wire reinforced plastic.   One of these was caused by a missing grommet
in the firewall which allowed the rattling harness to eventually wear
through and short out against the hole...  arc-burned a notch in the
firewall and fried the harness.    

Likewise corroded plug contacts which can overheat and burn, melt the
connectors and actually set the plug on fire.    


Most electrical troubles like this can be avoided with simple care and
preventative maintenance.   Grommets are sold by all the vendors...  and
the Tech Guide talks about those plug mis-haps.   

(uh oh, did I evoke "Tech Guide"?)    



tony..