• Hi Guest!
    You can help ensure that British Car Forum (BCF) continues to provide a great place to engage in the British car hobby! If you find BCF a beneficial community, please consider supporting our efforts with a subscription.
    There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this gawd-aweful banner
Tips
Tips

New Bugeye wiring harness?

Share this page

I

ichthos

Darth Vader
Country flag
Offline
I am thinking of replacing my wiring harness for a number of reasons. If I am going to do it, now is the time since my car is basically dismantled. Even though I have done most of the work on my car, I am no mechanic and certainly not an electrician. Is this something an average person can do? Are all of the wires labeled for easy installation? Any sources on a good wiring harness and prices?
Thanks, Kevin
 
Others will come with the sources but, as someone who is dealig with the wire harness on a '76 (MUCH more complicated) it's still not hard especially if you have a new one ad are methodical.
 
Check out British Wiring for the new harness, along with new connectors. Find a schematic of your car and have it blown up at a blueprint shop, then laminated. Do this for the legend too. That makes a huge difference trying to trace circuits, and you can take dry erase markers and trace the component(s) you're working on. Test light is essential and you can pick those up practically anywhere.
 
I've bought two harness (one for MGB, one for bugeye) from British Wiring and have been pleased with quality and price. When you buy, before to buy some additional female sleeved connectors.

When I did my MGB, it was the first time I replaced a harness. It wasn't too bad, but a few tips. Make sure you get a good schematic. They sell oversized colored ones on ebay. Also, when you remove the old harness, snip it out and leave about 1" of the old wire at each connection. That way you can see the color of the wire that went there originally. Helped me out a ton. But basically, the new harness wires will terminate approximately where they are supposed to. Even for an electrical hardhead like myself it wasn't too bad.
 
Wires are not identified - you need a wiring diagram...however, once its laid out, its pretty easy to understand.

All wiring harnesses are made by the same factory in England - whether they come from British Wiring, VB or Moss - they're all the same product...so, its just who you develop a good relationship with & who gives the best prices.
 
tony barnhill said:
All wiring harnesses are made by the same factory in England - whether they come from British Wiring, VB or Moss - they're all the same product...so, its just who you develop a good relationship with & who gives the best prices.
Click to expand...

Are you sure about that? I know BW changed hands sometime in the past few years and things might have changed, but when I had my B harness done, I had it customized (for driving lights) and was under the impression BW did their own construction.

Also, being it was my first install, they were great to work with when I had to call and ask questions.
 
Kevin, I just put a new wiring harness into my 59 BE - not super hard to do, but there are some tricky bits. The hardest thing I found to do was the flasher unit that clicks so your turn signals blink.

Another tricky part is the high beam/low beam unit on the floor. Just make sure it's all connected up to the main wiring harness before checking out your lights. They're all connected.

I also have an extra wiring diagram for the BE, one of those that's sold laminated on EBay...I only need one so it's yours for $12, including shipping. You'll also need a Voltmeter.

I bought my harness from British Wiring, bought the cheapest one they had and it was excellent, bought front/rear, hih beam/low beam and 2 pigtails to the lights.

Any questions, feel free to ask me while it's still fresh in my mind. I kept the positive ground on the car.
 
It seems that when I was looking at BW, they offered me more choices than Moss. Tony, didn't you get the wrong terminal ends with your harness because of a mid year design change?
 
John Moore said:
tony barnhill said:
All wiring harnesses are made by the same factory in England - whether they come from British Wiring, VB or Moss - they're all the same product...so, its just who you develop a good relationship with & who gives the best prices.
Click to expand...

Are you sure about that? I know BW changed hands sometime in the past few years and things might have changed, but when I had my B harness done, I had it customized (for driving lights) and was under the impression BW did their own construction.

Also, being it was my first install, they were great to work with when I had to call and ask questions.
Click to expand...
Yep, I also had one customized by BW for the '70 GT into which I'm putting a steel dash back before it changed hands...I even talked with the factory when it was being built to answer some of their questions...when I did my '63 Midget recently, I used a harness from Moss - I had an opportunity to talk with BW & asked them to read the factory parts numbers off a harness bag on their shelf - same as the one on Moss' bag (not the Moss # but the factory #)...so I called the factory - yep, they supply all 3.

Trevor Jessie said:
It seems that when I was looking at BW, they offered me more choices than Moss. Tony, didn't you get the wrong terminal ends with your harness because of a mid year design change?
Click to expand...
Yep, had 1 extra white wire - that was why I was chasing BW, VB & Moss to try & find the right harness....BW & Moss had the same extra white wire in their harnesses...VB, of course, couldn't check to see what was on their shelf....that's why I called the factory: to see about the extra white wire...found out they build one harness to fit both the MkI & MkII Midget & that MkI owners just have to ignore the extra wire!
 
What are the reasons people replace the wiring harness? The problem with mine is that The cloth covering is like powder in many areas-the plastic coating is just fine. Eventhough I labeled the wires before I removed them, some of my labels are too faded and some of my labels were chewed mice) so that there are a number of wires I will be hard pressed to figure out where they go. It will make putting it back together even more difficult because all the plastic wire coatings are black - there is really no color to go by any more. When I bought my TR6, the PO had removed the wiring harness. My TR6 was easy to hook back up because the wires were all color coded and the manual had an easy to understand schematic.
 
What you described is reason enough for me!
 
What flavor of Spridget do you have? The wiring of the bugeye is pretty simple, but the wiring of the late 70s cars is more complex and the diagrams I've seen are frankly pretty confusing. As long as you're careful and methodical, though, it really should be OK.

Admittedly, we do field a lot of questions here that go something like "I put in a new wiring harness and now the turn signal operates the ejection seat" or something like that. The answer in all cases is that something wasn't connected right. The nice thing about electricity is that you hook it up right, it works. End of story. Totally unlike nasty things like carburetors...
 
Carburetors, nasty, ha, not ours Steve.
 
ichthos said:
What are the reasons people replace the wiring harness?
Click to expand...
Pretty much what you mentioned. Tunebug had some electric issues when I bought him, so I could either trace down all the wires and make sure there were no DPO issues, or just start fresh. Bugeye wiring is very simple, so it made more sense to start with known good wires.

The process for me took the better part of a weekend -- but mostly because I moved very slowly. I'm sure I could do it again in an afternoon.
 
jlaird said:
Carburetors, nasty, ha, not ours Steve.
Click to expand...

Of course, I was being my whimsical, boyish self--but after today, I could be serious. Smelled gas, stopped the car, saw raw gas dripping energetically from the rear SU. Pulled it apart beside the road, fixed it, drove home just in time to get caught in the first rain in 6 months. Not my day....

I think I'll stick to electrical stuff.
 
Tony, the extra white wire.. White with a brown stripe? Did it end near the dizzy at one end and under the dash at the other? You've got me curious, as there is such a wire in MK II Midgets/MK III Sprites that is the Dirty Oil Filter Warning Light wire. Finding the oil filter adapter that has the terminal for it is the hard part...

If that's the wire.. ?
 
But Steve, the real joy is that you could fix it along the road and did not need a flatbed because a module went away.

As to the rain, rain after a six month dry spell is welcome.
 
Pythias said:
Tony, the extra white wire.. White with a brown stripe? Did it end near the dizzy at one end and under the dash at the other? You've got me curious, as there is such a wire in MK II Midgets/MK III Sprites that is the Dirty Oil Filter Warning Light wire. Finding the oil filter adapter that has the terminal for it is the hard part...

If that's the wire.. ?
Click to expand...
No, the early Midgets have a pull starter that doesn't need the white wire I'm talking about.
 
Back
Top