Bobby, thanks for the link. A 10 day wiring install sounds just about my speed. I too am looking at the EZ or Painless 21 circuit wiring harness as I am going with an electric fan, power windows, interior lighting, power seats and ground effects lighting so I think I will easily use up the extra circuits.

 

Dittos on the EZ 21 circuit kit; decent price.

 

I just ordered a ez-21 yesterday for my sons 88 4x4. It cost me $174.00 with shipping. I bought one last year for my 50f1 for $150.00. Well worth every cent.

 

I purchased a Painless kit for my CJ7 and it was pretty easy and straight forward to install. Other than a few problems routing around things and a couple of user error problems (ie- misreading the instructions and hooking a couple of wires to the wrong terminal) it was very easy to install and took no time at all. I didn't find any problems with it other than the fairly high price, but in my opinion, it was worth it for the ease of installation. I plan to purchase a Painless kit for my 51 when I get ready to wire it up.

That's my 2 cents....

 

Kusto,
I wired my truck in a weekend. Of course I didn't have to mess with carpeting and interior panels. The biggest issues I had were deciding where and how to mount the fuse block and where to route the wires. I ended up fabbing a bracket that mounted to my custom hanging pedal assy (I didn't want to drill any holes in my firewall). The original location to run the wiring harness through the firewall is on the upper left. I didn't want that huge unsightly mess. I ended up running my wiring harness out through the passenger side toe board just to the right of the tranny hump (there was an existing hole...and the wires came out right near my starter for easy hook up) The added benefit of this was that I could keep the harness low and bring the necessary wire up and mostly hidden to the alternator and distributor.

I think I laid out and routed the wires 3 or 4 times before I decided how I was actually going to route the harness. My advice is to not make any connection at all until you are happy with the routing. Get everything where you want it and then start making the terminations.

Also...I don't like the look of the crimp connectors, so what I would do is to remove the plastic sleeve from the crimp connector (easy to do with a small punch) then I would solder it on the wire and use heat shrink tubing to insulate it (put the heat shrink on before soldering....lol). This make much cleaner and longer lasting connections.

Bobby

 

Good points there Bobby. I too have been fooled by the shrink tube before.

 

I did the same on a CJ7 I restored. I went one step further before adding the shrink tube, I put a small amount of dielectric grease on the terminal to prevent any corrosion on anything that could be exposed to water.

 

If I hadn't used the Painless Fuse Block I would have used the EZ Wire. I Got the fuse block for a low price and just purchased the wiring and did some other cool stuff with LEDs and relays that I wanted to do. The one thing I have to agree is by doing the wiring yourself you learn so much more about your truck. I took my time and enjoyed every minute of the process. FTE had some great info and threads to get answers.