I currently have the 6-volt set-up, and my wiring harness is original, and pretty spent and scary looking.

I'd like to get a new wiring harness from one of the catalog places, but here's my questions.

If I get the original style harness, will it hold up to a 12 volt conversion? The only reason I'm sticking with 6 volt for now is because the previous owner installed a new battery and new generator just before I bought it, so I figured I'd use those, then convert to 12 volt further on down the road. I'd rather not have to rewire twice.

 

It would be much better to make your conversion to 12V now. The original wiring harness will handle 12V fine since it actually has larger wires for 6V than for 12V. The problem with the original harnesses is that you have no fuse protection and the old cloth covering. A modern harness would be a great improvement over the original. A certain amount of rewiring will be necessary when you switch to 12V anyway so why now get it out of the way now?

 

Just to elaborate, you can't run 6 volt thru 12 volt wires. You'll melt them off. So if you switch wires as Vern is suggesting do the whole switch and go 12 right away.

I use a 6V wire harness on 12V. I like the cloth covered wires - actually they are rubber covered with a cloth jacket. The colors match up with the shop manual wiring schematic so making connections is a breeze.

While your old system doesn't have fuses, it does use a circuit breaker in the line. Funny how in our homes we've made fuses obsolete and gone to circuit breakers, but in automotive apps we dump the circuit breakers for fuses???

 

I thought he meant buy a new 6v harness now, and convert to 12v later? That would be perfectly OK, in fact it would give a more robust system, assuming the repro 6v systems use the proper wire gauges for 6v.

 

Yes ALBUQ, that's what I meant...

 

Note that your new generator is capable of outputting 12 volts. With a new regulator and some minor wiring modifications, (and light bulb replacements) you could have a 12v negative ground generator set-up.