Completed the wiring (maybe)

I only had a couple hours today to work on the car but I got into testing. Of course there are problems…

First thing to do was the driver’s side headlight. There was some surface rust in here so I painted it last night. That might be causing me problems now but more on that later.

Yesterday I was surprised that I had not taken any pictures of the headlight harness. So here is one. The wires are in a rubber conduit to protect from rocks and water in the fender. The striped wire grounds to a screw in the back of the bucket. You can also see the green bare wire that gets fed though the parking light socket and soldered to the contact button.

The repro wiring is insulated wire with the fabric woven over it. So the wires are a little thicker than the factory wires. Most of the time that does not matter, but for some reason the parking light socket was a lot tighter on this side than the passenger side. So I had to trim off the cotton to get the wire to feed into the socket. No biggie, nobody will see this. The contact button is all soldered up here too.

And installed! Next I hooked up the wires inside the fender. For some reason I don’t have a pic of that.

I connected the horn relay too. Not a lot of extra wire here.

Well lookit that! Main chassis harness is complete! Whohoo!

One last wire to install! Actually that is not true, I did not install the new horn wire or the new gas tank harness. And I have to rewire stuff like the heater/defroster motors and the spotlight. But those are projects for later.

Here is where that wire goes. Connects the coil to the points.

Here we go! So all the wires are run. At least I think they are. Time to test.

Here is the pile of wiring I took out of the car. Keep in mind this is a *simple* electrical system. After one last look-over I turned on the battery. No smoke! I pressed the horn and it honked. So first test down.

Parking lights work too. Instrument lights and the ammeter moved correctly. So 4 for 4 so far.

Passenger headlight works! High and low beam.

But we have a fail on the driver’s side. It is just glowing in both high and low beam. When I see something like this I assume a bad ground. Since the parking light is working fine the most likely place for the bad ground is the striped wire that ties the headlight bulb to the bucket.

When I unplugged the bulb this happened. That is the common terminal so I assumed this was the problem. I got out my soldering gun and soldered the terminal back on. Then I tested the bulb and it works fine. I also verified I have battery voltage at the lamp socket. But when I plugged it in it still does not work. I decided to move on.

The next step was to turn on the ignition. No smoke there either. So I started testing.

Turn signals work! Gas gauge does not move so I probably got those wires backwards in spite of my best efforts. And for some reason the passenger brake light does not work. Since the turn signal does work that is a bit of a mystery. However the Climatizer and defroster fans work. I am out of time but I will troubleshoot this and then try to start the car.

1941 Studebaker Champion

Living with an old Studebaker

Completed the wiring (maybe)

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