Wiring

The existing loom was a real mess, with some of the cloth sleeved wires cracked and flaking off, lots hacked and butchered by a previous owner and almost all of them under the bonnet joined…badly. A new loom would cost in the region of £400 but wouldn’t be suitable anyway because I intend to make some important upgrades. The original loom had a grand total of two fuses which is clearly not suitable for a modern restoration. Also I’ll be replacing the dynamo and voltage regulator with a modern alternator, changing the amps gauge for a volts gauge as the old one cannot handle the alternator output current, adding a Hi-Fi system and amplifiers to match the one in my newer Jag, adding a reversing light and relocating the battery in the boot. So clearly a ‘stock replacement’ wouldn’t be worth buying. I’m no stranger to car electrics, well, at least the rudimentary wiring fitted in my early vehicles, so I intend to make my own wiring loom. It looks to most people to be a complicated minefield, but when you break it down, each component has a single wire to supply a feed to it, with another to the ground of the chassis. Just deal with one wire at a time and you won’t go far wrong. I’ll be fitting a modern fuse box and relay box so the system will be much safer. The cost of the wires however is always a stumbling point for bespoke looms, it’s not cheap as you need to have many different colours and a few different gauges. A better option is to buy a loom from a donor vehicle and strip it for the components. I managed to get one from ebay from a high end Mercedes, so this obviously had all of the additional wiring for the extra features so was perfect.

I spent a few hours stripping it down, and now I need to organise and categorise each one.