• I am responding to calls and correspondance regarding the merits of replacing a wiring harness with members of different groups, and since the questions and issues from car groups appears to revolve around the same discussions - I want to summarize my 20 plus years’ experiences and observations.
• Your car's wiring was made of either aluminum over impregnated cloth cover or copper with a plastic insulation.
• The cloth and plastic insulations were porous. Contaminants, like oxygen, moisture and airborne pollutants, eventually pass through the insulation to attack the wire; a condition called oxidation.
• There is no practical way to completely seal off the circulation of air and moisture between the individual wire strands. Once the wire strands become oxidized, the internal resistance of the wire increases substantially.
• This is not a good thing for your car's electrical system, and for that reason along no one should spend $20M - $40M (M for thousand) restoring a car and re-install the old harness because is original! Sooner or later the restoration will outlast the old wiring – that is assuming it was a good restoration to star with. Go figure!
• The life expectancy of a wiring harness is about 30 to 40 years at best before everything start to malfunction, thus going out to a shop spend a truck load of money having someone trying to figure out why their car is having electrical problems.
• I have done extensive research for wiring products, connectors and other associated matters to clearly understand what works best.
• Tin plated copper with heavy insulation is the best out there, and that’s what I use.
• Crimping wiring has been here for a good forty years. It is the industry standard and it is here to stay.
• Soldering is time consuming polluting and it will not make a harness much more significantly durable. I used both soldering and crimping.
http://www.Classicwiring.com
Lionel