Just ordered all the braided, lacquered, cloth covered wire for the wiring of my 53 f100. It looks like I'll end up spending about $275 total on materials for the wiring by the time I'm done. But, still an amazing savings over pre-made harnesses. I saw in the Shop Manual for the truck that those non-metallic asphalt coated wire looms were not extensively used. As far as I can tell from the photos in the manual, most of the wires (at the front of the cowl anyway), were covered in a non stick tape. I found some evidence of this tape on some of my wiring, but had assumed that it had been a sticky tape that lost its stickiness over the passing of time. Does anyone have enough of the original wiring to verify that tape was used rather than looms?

 

Yup, my 49 had tape under the hood.

Making your own harness is rewarding in many ways.

 

I find it pretty satisfying. I have done it before, but not with the attention to historic detail that I'm doing it now. Thankfully, with a stock truck setup, it's not too complicated. I'll be running the wires from the cowl to the brake/tail lights in a loom. I also bought enough loom for the cross-over wiring between headlights and the under-cab wires from the solenoid to the terminal block. The rest of it gets the wrap. I'm hoping that doing the wrapping is easier than trying to figure out how many linear feet of loom and at what i.d. I'd need if I wasn't wrapping. As I mentioned, I noticed the wrapping in the Shop Manual. I mentioned it to the person at Rhode Island Wire and I was told where I could buy the non-adhesive wrapping tape. I was also told that tying the ends of the wrap off is something of an art form in itself. I'm just going to make something up as I go, but if anyone actually knows how the ends of the wrap were tied off, I'd love to know. I think that this may rank as one of the most obscure stock truck questions asked at this forum...