wiring kits

[tomslik]

who's do you like/dislike?
i've used American autowire, painless, haywire and jegs.
painless and Autowire are my favorites, haywire ain't terrible , and you couldn't give me another Jegs kit. but there's other stuff out there and i'd like to hear your opinions

[chimp koose]

this will be a thread I can learn from . I will need to wire my car one day and have no experience with any kit.

[kb426]

I have used the Centech fuse panel twice. I like the wire attachment on the sides with screws. I researched Coach Controls before the last job. They have relays mounted on the board which is very nice but if a relay fails, it's soldered on. The last 2 builds, I have used various components and designed my own, mostly because of components I wanted to use. The Rebel kits are highly respected on the hamb. This is a link to his instruction manual to see if you are curious about the layout of his kits. https://watsons-streetworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/RW-21.pdf
One of the things I have been doing is using the ignition switch to control a 70 amp relay to feed most of the system that doesn't have relays. The reason for that is an ignition switch at best is designed to handle 40 amps. If you have lots of modern electrics, you can exceed that easily. If a kit doesn't come with xl rated wire, I wouldn't consider it. I'm using heat shrink connectors that to my knowledge, none come with. I realize this doesn't help someone looking for the best kit but depending on your application might provide some useful info.

[enjenjo]

For many years I sold these kits.  https://www.ezwiring.com/  At the time I preferred them because they used all black wire. They now have GM color coded kits at very reasonable prices. At one time they were having trouble with some of the crimping of the terminals, but the last batches I bought had corrected that problem. They used TLX insulated wire that never caused any problems for me or my customers. I had several local shops that bought multiple kits from me.

I quit stocking them when my discount was lowered to the point it was no longer economical buying in bulk and trying to sell at retail. It was still a good product. 

[Crosley.In.AZ]

I used 1 EZ WIre kit.  No problems.  I also used BlueSea fuse blocks that come with covers and raw wire spools.  The pre-terminal fuse block stuff is easier.

Buddy used a budget kit from eBay on his Studie Champ truck build a few years ago.  He had problems with alternator feed back to the ignition with engine run on.  He would not listen to my suggestions since his neighbor was an "electrical guy"... My buddy finally admitted the diode inline of the alt wire fixed the problem like I had suggested weeks earlier.  LOL

 

[Pete]

Many moons ago I worked for a company that built some of the first space junk (communication satelites).
After many failures in testing wiring for everything we could think of to test for like G force of take off, G force of impact from natural space particles, radiation, heat, cold, we found that vibration was the worst enemy. The vibrational G forces encountered on take off in early day space flight vehicles was very high. It could be multiplied many times if the part in question was mounted in such a way as to be suspended between two points and was resonant at the vibration frequency.
Many of the early developments of space junk wiring are still used  today in commercial and industrial applications. One of the most notable being the use of wire with PTFE (Teflon) insulation. With this type of wire in a bundle, if one wire overheats, it won't take out adjacent wires as with commonly used  plastic insulated wire. PTFE insulation is good to 500F degrees. It is highly resistant to the various chemicals in automotive use and highly resistant to abrasion.

[jaybee]

One of the Apollo astronauts described the ride on a Saturn V as the feel of being a bug on a vibrating radio antenna at highway speed. Despite what it looks like in the takeoff film, that beast was constantly trying to tumble out of control.