New Zealand Datsun Club

righto team i will ditch the chockblocks! and i will go and buy some plugs! and i will also look around for more coloured wire but it seems to be a bit of a pig to find. because apparently you cant use houshold wire, and at repco wire is normally $2 a meter but the dude gave me it for about $1.20 a meter when i got a 30m roll. but i'll probably need another 100m! anyone got any ideas to were to get some cheaper?

cheers

Be a Ninga

haha yeah i should!

today i took some photo's but left my camera at the garage haha! andway got started on rewiring car, got a couple of little things done, have tomoro off so hopefully will get a bit done!

but a setback! i seized my awesome scooter coming home today! so now it'll be a pig getting to the garage and back! if anyone has a 110cc motor with gearbox that there wanting to sell hit me up!

Hey dude. Im up in Blenheim in a couple weeks for a cousins wedding. Im keen to come meet and have a yarn over your Datto!

yeah bro im keen as! give me a text when you come up! my number is 0273219837, the names Jordan by the way haha. will you be bringing up a car? because i have no transport at the moment haha?

here's a couple of pictures of the paint, you can kinda see the orange peely finish on it. and a picture of the primary wiring circuit im using

mean take it into the sun man

z18et1200coupe wrote:righto team i will ditch the chockblocks! and i will go and buy some plugs! and i will also look around for more coloured wire but it seems to be a bit of a pig to find. because apparently you cant use houshold wire, and at repco wire is normally $2 a meter but the dude gave me it for about $1.20 a meter when i got a 30m roll. but i'll probably need another 100m! anyone got any ideas to were to get some cheaper?

cheers

You can use household wire, but not the TPS type which runs through your walls (it's classed as "non-flexible" even though you can bend it etc). Appliance wire (also known as hook-up wire) will do the job, but the insulation is much thicker than you require as it's designed for 230Vac as opposed to 12Vdc, so your loom gets bulky very quickly. And you'll also run out of colours very quickly and I'm not sure how it would cope with the heat of the engine.

I'd recommend getting some old wiring looms from wrecked cars, and stripping out individual wires of various colours and lengths. Modern cars are best, as the wire will be in better condition and there are a huge amount of different colour combinations as they also have trace colours on the insulation. Only problem is some of the wires can get oxidised if they've been exposed previously (usually near the ends), making them near impossible to solder at those points.

Incidentally, I've wired my Impala with all one colour wire. But I've used aircraft wire which is all labelled every 100mm or so (it's actually etched into the insulation). One of the former perks of life in the Air Force!

I almost bought this car when it was for sale in Napier in January '08. But it got listed literally a few hours after I bought my B310 wagon. I would've bought it anyway if the rego hadn't lapsed!

fast4motion wrote:

z18et1200coupe wrote:righto team i will ditch the chockblocks! and i will go and buy some plugs! and i will also look around for more coloured wire but it seems to be a bit of a pig to find. because apparently you cant use houshold wire, and at repco wire is normally $2 a meter but the dude gave me it for about $1.20 a meter when i got a 30m roll. but i'll probably need another 100m! anyone got any ideas to were to get some cheaper?

cheers

You can use household wire, but not the TPS type which runs through your walls (it's classed as "non-flexible" even though you can bend it etc). Appliance wire (also known as hook-up wire) will do the job, but the insulation is much thicker than you require as it's designed for 230Vac as opposed to 12Vdc, so your loom gets bulky very quickly. And you'll also run out of colours very quickly and I'm not sure how it would cope with the heat of the engine.

I'd recommend getting some old wiring looms from wrecked cars, and stripping out individual wires of various colours and lengths. Modern cars are best, as the wire will be in better condition and there are a huge amount of different colour combinations as they also have trace colours on the insulation. Only problem is some of the wires can get oxidised if they've been exposed previously (usually near the ends), making them near impossible to solder at those points.

Incidentally, I've wired my Impala with all one colour wire. But I've used aircraft wire which is all labelled every 100mm or so (it's actually etched into the insulation). One of the former perks of life in the Air Force!

I almost bought this car when it was for sale in Napier in January '08. But it got listed literally a few hours after I bought my B310 wagon. I would've bought it anyway if the rego hadn't lapsed!

oh ok mate! i have a mate who has a bunch of wrecked cars on his property so might go get some wiring looms then! cheers for the help mate!

haha yeah it came with some plates that are on hold though so its no big problem that the rego is gone! but its still annoying because i have to get it recerted.

cheers for the help mate!

Yeah, it was getting it re-certed which put me off. I even rang LTSA just to confirm whether the cert plate was still valid if the rego had lapsed.

The other advantage of using old looms, is that you can keep and reuse the connectors. Just solder different wires on near the connector if you want to change colours. Many of the plastic connectors you buy at Repco/Supercheap/Dick Smith are quite poor quality, very hard to actually disconnect, and very bulky in comparison to original auto connectors.