Late '67 Wiring Harness Replacement. Please advise or laugh.

[DadaCheese]

Greetings,

First: YES, I seem to be bad at doing intelligent searches in the Forum, so feel free to attach; "Duh!"-links to previously posted items on this subject.

Finally I am going to replace the wiring harness on my rust experiment Westfalia. It is a late '67. Advice seems to be that Wiring Works http://www2.cip1.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=C17-WK-213-66-67 seems to be the best harnesses?

Questions for anyone who is experienced:
1) Besides the harness linked above, what other electrical parts are good to buy/ready to have on-hand for this project? (ie new fusebox? any specific relay switches, etc.)

2) Any specific instructions/suggestions about hardships you encountered?

3) My brother and I will work on this together; how long might it take (I usually take the suggested "reasonable" predicted duration time and then multiply it by 6, which I call the "Volkswagen Factor").

4) Anything else...?

Lastly, I'll say that we'll be doing this work in Chico, CA starting on Friday the 22nd of April, 2011 and hopefully finishing before/by Sunday. If you want to come laugh at us, or lend a hand, let me know. Thanks!

Any/all help and advice is greatly appreciated. I've had a rebuilt engine in my VW for over a year now, but getting this wiring done has held me up (and the common stuff: time, money and distance).

[Jerry]

Mr. Dadacheese, look up "type2.com" & go to the wiring diagrams. Save the file for your '67 on a memory stick, take it to Staples & have them blow it up & laminate it. I did this for my first one & has helped me ever since. It's color coded & everything
_________________
Looking for SO34 parts.

thevwcompound *instagram*

[Jerry]

It helps to be a contortionist as well.
_________________
Looking for SO34 parts.

thevwcompound *instagram*

[DadaCheese]

[Das Dragon]

There are wiring diagrams right here on thesamba:

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/info/wiringt2.php
_________________
Rest In Peace HamburgerBrad, we will never forget you!



_________________________________________________________
DB3 said:
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*********'s constant over-estimation of his own importance never ceases to amaze me."

With *****, "Bullshit Happens"!

[jeremy57ride]

The laminate schematic is the way to go...also don't forget to have a copy of the map key.
Also you could buy direct from wiringworks and save a few bucks.

[BarryL]

Are late '67 different from early '67? I know the backup light harness is independent and a retrofit.

[Andrew]

[DadaCheese]

[velvetgreen]

might be worth repeating that when removing the old wiring harness it makes sense to attach (i.e. tape together) the new harness to the old one so that as old one is pulled out the new one is pulled in.

also might want to grab your favourite lubircant as well (for the harness not you!) as there are typically a few places on the frame that are a real PITA to pull the new harness through.

oh ditto on some safety glasses- don`t want rust chunks in the eye!!

[Andrew]

[DadaCheese]

Greetings,

Following, is a very long, wordy, write-up to aid anyone who will be doing a complete re-wire of their split bus. It contains some general advise and a lot of lessons learned.

My brother and I were 100% successful in rewiring my late-1967 VW Westfalia Camper Bus this past Easter Weekend, 2011.

Due to this thread and all the helpful advice, and other threads I have read, we were able to avoid a lot of mistakes and have a good understanding prior to doing the work.

For YOU (the person about to attempt the same), I thought I’d put a lot of this advice in one location to help you out, and note a variety of “lessons learned”.

Our job took roughly 16+ hours and two people. Don’t be scared by that amount of time! We weren’t working the entire 16 hours, and had some problems that we had to overcome in the process which made it longer than it should have taken. Hopefully the (wordy) advice below will make your experience easier and quicker.

SECTION ONE - PARTS and TOOLS

Wiring Harness .
Naturally you need a wiring harness.
The man/business who creates German factory-quality wiring harnesses to original specifications for your bus is Bob Nodvik of Wiring Works.

There are other posts here on The Samba on this subject that either don’t have the name correct and/or still have his old address. Here it is, 100% correct as of April, 2011:

Bob Nodvik
Wiring Works
2025 Mesa Street
San Pedro, CA 90731
Phone: (310) 519-8147

You should call, or write, to Bob and order what you need (specific year/model), he’ll provide pricing information. You’ll send him a check, and after it has cleared, he’ll send you your wires. If you need to buy via credit card, you can also buy Bob’s work through sites like Wolfsburg West. Allow plenty of time for all your parts to be ordered long before your project.
The wiring harness does not come with some parts/wires, such as the wiring for reverse lights if you have a late ’67 like mine. Those wires are sold separately. Also, the main wiring harness does not come with the wires to rewire the dome lights. Those wires are sold separately. There are also other wires not included in the set because they are part of something else, such as your turn-signal lever switch.
The wiring harness set comes with written instructions of how to install. I’d go into detail of all that here, but Bob’s documents are copyrighted, and I don’t want to infringe. The instructions are type-written and have not to scale diagrams that help as guides as you go through the instructions. Even Bob, however, suggests having a correct copy of your split window’s wiring diagram (correct year/model) handy for reference. If you have the diagram in color, even better. Just as Samba Member Jerry recommended, having a laminated copy can/will help considerably. I managed to find the correct one, in color, here on The Samba site, I blew it up to 11”x17” paper and had it laminated. I’m glad I did, it was VERY helpful. I also laminated the key (the legend key of what the various letters on the diagram represent). We referred to these often.
Days before doing the work, I must have re-read the instructions with the kit five or more times to be ready for the work. Better to understand it in advance than when it is too late.

Extra Wires/Connectors .

You most likely will need some extra wire and connectors. Bob’s wires are strong, and perfectly built, but it is other things you hadn’t thought of that you’re going to need some wire and connectors for (such as making sure that your tail lights are grounded properly). Insulated/non-insulated wire terminations; it’s all up to you, but ultimately you’re going to need some, so hone your wire stripping/crimping skills and have enough ends to be ready just in case. Have plenty of male and females ends, and loop end connectors can be good for ground wires. Again, it’s good to have all this handy, just in case.
If you’re the type who will only do stock, here’s a website for German quality connectors, crimpers, etc. –
http://www.germansupply.com/home/customer/product.php?productid=17968

Get a new fuse box and fuse box holding clip .

Unless you are 100% sure that your fuse box is NOT brittle and old, there’s no reason you shouldn’t replace it along with the wiring harness. Heck, I now have a new plastic fuse box cover which is something I don’t remember my bus having since I’ve owned it.

Fuses .

Chances are that after you’ve connected everything, you’ll burn up a couple fuses when/if anything goes wrong after the re-wire. It’s always good to have plenty anyway. The fuse box holds eight, and unless you’ve made modifications, Bob’s wiring instructions says that you can/should only use white (8 amps) fuses.

New Positive Battery Cable .

The kit doesn’t come with one, and it you’re replacing everything else, why not this too?
One thing I didn't think to order along with my new battery cable was a new grommet for where the power goes through the engine compartment to the starter motor. I re-used the 44 year old one, but wish I had replaced it.

Negative ground strap for battery .

I bought a Wolfsburg West reproduction strap (and the positive cable from them too). Why? ‘cause I was tired of American after-market connectors that don’t take 13mm wrenches. The new cables are worth it to me just for that very reason.

Parts You Hadn’t Considered .

Besides the wiring harness, you’re going to be touching a LOT of parts on your split bus that you may or may not have previously replaced, and/or you’re going to find you wish you were replacing the second you touch them. Such as:
INSTRUMENT LIGHT BULB HOLDER (push-on style connector)
There are six of these alone on the speedometer unit, and naturally each one also needs a DASH LIGHT BULB (fits all illuminated dash instruments, 12 volt). I learned when I put in a rebuilt speedometer awhile back that if you have these and they are from 1967, chances are some of them are going to break, no matter how careful you are. I planned ahead this time and went ahead and replaced all six, and the one for the gas gauge (totaling 7 new ones), along with new bulbs when we did the re-wire.

Other light bulbs; see if you should be ordering any bulbs before this project, even if they just end up being spares. Double-filament tail light bulbs, headlights, parking light bulbs, blinker light bulbs, bulbs for your reverse lights, new light bulb for your license plate light… and while you are checking which ones you may need, it’s a good time for you to try unscrewing every one of the housings for these light fixtures in advance of your re-wire job, and take a look at the gaskets for them. If they're going to need replacing, this is a good time to do that before doing the re-wire work .
More about Gaskets: Do your headlight assemblies need new gaskets? How about your tail lights? If you can’t/don’t want to afford new ones this time around, will you be able to re-close them if you need to remove them during the re-wire process? I took the opportunity to replace every part of my license plate light assembly, but broke the 44-year old bulb in the process, and didn’t have a spare on me.

Some other larger, more expensive parts you should be asking yourself if it is time to replace are/would be:
Speedometer. Does yours work properly?
Speedometer gasket (cheap).
Gas Gauge.
Knobs/switches.
Any/all parts of your windshield wiper assembly (heck, since you’re going to be up in the guts of it anyway, might be a good side-project).
The Black Box 9-pin flasher relay (’67, 12 volt).
Turn signal lever switch (the thing mounted below the steering wheel).
HEADLIGHT HIGH/LOW BEAM RELAY, 12 volt

Tools to have on hand (regular and some beyond typical) .

Some fine grain sandpaper/emery cloth. It’s wise to clean all the male electrical posts on switches and such that you’ll be putting the new wires on.
More than one pair of good needle-nosed pliers.
Several different flat-head screw drivers, and a few different Phillips-head ones too.
A label maker depending on how forgetful, or detail-oriented you are, it can come in handy, particularly when/if rewiring over and over to figure out why something isn’t working after the re-wire job, and/or if you replace/extend a wire with the wrong color.
Wire stripper/crimper
Socket set
Fish Tape Thanks again to the forums, I learned about this tool, it is basically a pull-line that electricians use to pull wires through conduit. It’s a little safer to use than rope for this job since it is less likely to snag or break.
Tape and/or Wire to attach new wiring harness to the Fish Tape
Safety Glasses Sure enough, some grease dropped right on where my eyeball is ‘cept I had my glasses on.
Good flashlights and extra batteries Ours was highly maneuverable to point (and stay pointed) at anything we needed to look at.
Latex gloves I’m a computer guy by day job, so my hands are un-calloused and wimpy. Latex gloves can help prevent small nicks and they help keep dirt/grease off.
Digital Camera Helps a lot to take a lot of pictures of the “before” so you can reference the pictures if you get lost. Also you can show The Samba before and after pictures if you’re proud of your work.
Coveralls (jumpsuit) Might look dorky, but my favorite thing about a coveralls is that I can be wiggling around under the car, get covered in dirt/oil and such, but then quickly strip it off when I need to go to the parts store without missing a beat, and without getting the interior of my operational car dirty.

SECTION TWO – A LITTLE ABOUT PROCESS

Overall, the whole process was easy, but we did run into a few unexpected snags.
The first major step is/was disconnecting the old main (13’ long) wiring harness, attaching it to the Fish Tape, pulling that through (carefully, watching for snags), and then attaching the new harness to the fish tape and pulling that through. In all honesty, that was perhaps the fastest and easiest part we did.

The good news for (at least in a ’67) is that you do not need to remove the engine to do the rewire. You do, however, need to remove the front dash tray (we managed to leave mine kind of off to the side with the speedometer cable end cap preventing it from being removed entirely out of the bus; you’d need to remove the cable otherwise). You also do need to get to the connections on the solenoid of the starter motor, which is never fun on your back with heater box and such in the way (but not impossible), and one other big challenge was attaching the gas gauge wire on the top-back of the gas tank since (at least in my bus), we could not see the connector, and had to do it 100% by feel.

Things get a little more challenging when you are disconnecting and reconnecting the spaghetti mess of wires in the front which go to the instrument panels. You have to realize, in advance, that depending on the history of your VW, there may be any number of jimmy-rigged parts, wires and modifications made over the years. Although much of mine is stock, I did have a few dash “fires” in high school in which old wires burned up, and being a starving student, I had replaced wires with some wires I got out of the guts of an old washing machine.

This is why it is important to; 1. Have a working understanding of electronics, and specifically VW electronics (not as “logical” as you might hope), and, 2. Have that wiring diagram handy!

I’d like too to put in a note here about “being a contortionist” – It’s true, if you are limber and can stay in odd positions for a long period of time, you’ll be better off. I do yoga semi-regularly, and the week leading up to this job I did yoga twice a day. I was tired each evening, but not sore or in pain. Sometimes you’ll be upside down and sideways looking up under the driver’s side dash while holding a pair of pliers and a flashlight.

Scheduled breaks! Doing this with two people instead of one is much better than doing it alone. On top of that, if you have a third person who makes sure you take mental/physical breaks; that’s ideal. Thankfully my wife knows this too well (I can get pretty grumpy sometimes while working on the car), and she made certain we took breaks, stayed hydrated and ate.

The first problem we ran into is that one of the three male terminal posts on the original key ignition switch broke off as we were getting the speedometer back into place. Realizing we wouldn’t be able to fix it, we did learn of another great resource in Chico, CA: Brian Houston of Late Night Air Cooled ( http://latenightaircooled.com/ ). Not only did he meet us at his shop (although he wasn’t working that particular Saturday), but when he didn’t have the right part for us he tracked down someone who did, called us up and sold us the replacement.

Once we thought most everything was hooked up correctly, we had a problem that as we turned the key to first position the starter-motor immediately engaged. Simple and stupid problem, but this does help illustrate that things can go wrong, and you have to think through things… the problem was that one of the wires at the bottom of the speedometer, which becomes live when you turn on the ignition was touching one of the wires on the key ignition switch which sends a signal to the starter. We bent it away (naturally disconnecting the battery’s ground as we were looking for/figuring out the problem), and then that was fine.

The last confounding problem we had involved understanding completely how and why the “Black Box” flasher relay works the way it does.

My brother (the more “electronically inclined” of us two) will be writing up something about that (general advice), and I’ll edit this post later and insert it here. Until then, you’ll see three “X”s as a placeholder:

XXX

The problem we were having was that although the hazard lights worked, and blinked properly, the turn-signal blinkers did not work at all. After a lot of time checking everything and thinking about it, as well as tracing lines, we came to the realization that part of the rebuilt turn-signal switch from Wolfsburg West was not working properly. We got out the guts of my original one, soldered one detached wire on it, wired the old one in and everything worked perfectly.

SECTION THREE – COMPLETION & HAPPINESS

Ultimately, the entire project was a success and we took a short road trip to celebrate.

We all hope that this helps any other novices at doing a complete re-wiring. Thanks everyone, as always, for the support here on The Samba.

[Jerry]

I can't remember smiling much when I re-wired the sportsmobile I'm so glad everthing went well for you guys! I forgot to mention the 4 cement blocks topped with a roller-creeper by the front doors trick!
_________________
Looking for SO34 parts.

thevwcompound *instagram*

[Mortimer Bondurant]

Perfect timing Mr. D'Cheese,

My 15 year old son and I have his new harness in hand and are about to embark upon this project on his first ride, also a '67. We will be referring back to your post frequently, I'm sure.

Mort

p.s. That picture of you bending the harness is kinda like a Richard Simmons work-out video but you're not even breaking a sweat and you have much better clothes!

[Snoop Bob]

I am glad you posted this. I just did the same thing in my 67. The instructions from Bob are amazing. I did find a couple of things different/incorrect, at least for my bus.

Here is what I found -

On my front light harness assembly, there were 2 BROWN wires. The instructions listed one as BROWN-WHITE to the #S high beam relay, and one BROWN to #31 on the wiper switch (ground). I sorted this by process of elimination due to length and exit placement on the harness assembly.

In his instrument harness diagram (pg 7) he has listed a BLACK wire to the wiper switch going through the middle of the harness which then connects to the fuse box and then a BLK-WHT-GRN or BLACK wire to #15 on the 9-pin box. This wire in my harness I received was actually PURPLE through the harness to a BLK-WHT-GRN to #15 on the 9-pin.

The instructions for the turnsignal switch connections show the BLACK-VIOLET wire connecting to #54S on the flasher relay. This should read #54F

One thing I don't agree with is all white fuses. VW used 2 red and the rest white. I will follow these original fuse locations unless there is something I am missing.

The other difference I would have liked to see in the kit was the headlight pigtails having side crimped connectors like on the original ones. The in line connectors seem to squeeze in a bit too tight installing the headlight assemblies into the buckets. This is something I can change later on, so not too big of a deal.

Everything else was spot on. I was really impressed with this kit. The wire color difference may be a harness to harness thing depending on stock at hand, but I figured it was worth mentioning for search/help purposes.
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[DadaCheese]

[Andrew]

[jeremy57ride]

Wow! What a review. I'm sure this thread will help ease the minds of a few who are taking on this task.

TIP~ If that old harness has some good suptle wires in it, take the time to carfully cut it apart and wrap the colors individually. You will be glad to have some "stock" wire on the shelf if you ever need a length.
EDIT~ oops, yeah what Andrew said!

[wardvwracer]

Hi all, so this thread is from 2011, but I'm hoping someone can help out a fellow WiringWorks do-it-yourselfer.

I've been installing a new complete kit on my 63 Single Cab. So far its been very straight forward. This evening I noticed that my complete kit doesn't have the front harness instructions. My instructions only detail the main harness and dash harness install.

I have a color version of the OE wiring diagram, but Bob's instructions were much easier for me to follow.

Anyone out there have the front harness instructions???
_________________
David Ward
ACME Berrien Buggy Street/Strip racer build
1963 Single Cab
1969 Beetle Convertible
63 11-Window Kombi Bus
Cornpanzers

[easy e]

Not so much "instructions"... but, this fellow member provided a link to where there are 1967 headlight & turn signal wiring diagrams.
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aka: Evan
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