Make Your Own Wire Loom

As part of installing Guages and the auxillary battery, I quickly saw that there was a need to be able to run wires from front to back. I posted on the samba and got a lot of awesome ideas. At the point of this post, I had already ran a single wire hap hazardly from back to front on the driver's side.

Here is how I ended up making an auxillary wire loom for the bus.

Tips I used in running the wire from front to back.

If you're going to run 1 wire, run 8 or 10. This is planning for the future. You might only need 1 or 2 now, but since I've put it in, I've already thought of other things I can do with it. Continuity Tests, Remote Starter, Lights, Temporary circuits... Endless and all right there.

Use wire made for Trailer harnesses. This wire is cheap and made for all weather. generally 14 gauge, and multi colored. They even have Brown in case you want an extra OG ground.

I bought a 40 foot trailer wire from eTrailer.



You also may want to 1 or 2 dedicated 10 gauge wires. I bought some about 30' of that too from eTrailer.


The Assembly:
Here is the wire unraveled... and my dad's feet. He was about to own the wire.


Get a friend or somewhere to tie one end to. Stretch it out and fold it in half.


What you'll end up with is 8 wires at 20'. This is awesome and plenty to go from the engine compartment to anywhere under the dash. I also added in the 30' of blue 10 gauge wire. This will leave about 5' of blue wire at each end. I'm going to use the blue wire for an accessory circuit so this works well for me. It's also at this point you could easily add more wires if you are so inclined. .In all I have 9.

Hindsight Advice: Label the ends of the wires at this point unless you have unique colors. I didn't do this and now have to do circuit testing to make sure I have them correct.

Next step was to wrap it every foot or so with electrical tape.


Here's a long shot of the harness now:


Hindsight Advice: Per Busman, it would be wise to wrap the whole think in electrical tape. I think this OR heatshrink tubing would be effective. This would stop wear and effects from the elements. I may pull this out in order to do that. I had wrapped it all in plastic cord wrap tubing so I'm not sure that it will make much difference, BUT wires that move have friction which causes wear which causes bad things. Anyway...

Next step is to pull it into the engine compartment and then up to the front. I followed the path of the main wire harness and just tie wrapped it above it where I could. There are plenty of holes in the frame to run it through. The main wire harness on my bus runs along the main beam on the passenger side of the bus. It is mostly covered with sheathing and runs through a metal tube at in the center.

I laid underneath and pushed it through one of the existing grommets on the passenger side of the engine compartment next to where the starter is. It helps to have a friend there to pull as you push. I also found that popping the grommet out completely, running it through the hole, then pushing the grommet back into place was much easier. The space up there is tight and I have big hands.

Once the wire was run, I took some of that plastic cord control and wrapped the wires with it. I then used zip ties to hold it to the chasis.



Here are the wires in the engine compartment:


From Radio Shack I bought an 8x Terminal Block and mounted it to the firewall above the engine.



I connected the 8 wires from the trailer harness to that Terminal block. For ease, it probably would be a good idea to label what you use and hook them the same order in the back as the front.



Up front I pulled the wires in through the same hole as the main wire harness.

Read more about it here.

What did I do with the blue wire? 
I have an auxiliary battery so I connected to that in the engine compartment. under the dash I put in a 6x blade fuse block I bought from a FLAPS. This is going to be for my radio and other accessories up near the front of the bus.

I plan to put an inline 30amp fuse in the rear of the bus on the blue wire.

I need a picture of this. 

So, besides more pictures, that's about it. Simple upgrade and a little work can be used for many things through the future.

Casey