I'm finishing wrapping up rebuilding my entire dash for my 70 Barracuda and wanting to make sure I get any electrical upgrades that are needed out of the way. I'm not the brightest when it comes to electrical, so hopefully I'm doing this right. Using the article below, but I won't be able to get to anything past the firewall till spring.

Dash frame was completely powder coated, so I've added a couple of metal grounding studs and I've ran separate ground wires from the switch panel, the gauge cluster and the cigarette lighter plus radio.

Aside from hooking the two AMP meter leads together and making sure that they're well protected, anything I'm missing here? I've already upgraded to the rt-eng voltage limiter. I also have a separate voltage gauge that I'll be using.

https://www.allpar.com/threads/taking-c ... 1085245456

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1970 Barracuda 225 /6, 3spd on the floor, Blue/Blue

Hooboy. Allpar (after the site founder sold it to the Ferengi) × Ehrenberg. Don your hip waders and open your umbrella and you might minimize the amount of sewage you have to scrub off in the shower when you're done.

See here.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

That's why I came to you, I know you know your electricals like the back of your hand and I'm not familiar with Allpar, it was a recommendation from an e-bodies site, so thought it best to double check with you.

So it sounds like I'm doing things right on the inside dash by connecting the two amp wires together to remove it from the equation since I don't need it anyways and when I get it all together I just need to do the mods in the engine compartment. I did use CRC marine dielectric on the firewall connection block wire holes too to minimize future corrosion. If anything sounds off please let me know.

Truly appreciate your expertise and assistance!!

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1970 Barracuda 225 /6, 3spd on the floor, Blue/Blue

I don't quite agree, because you've still got full car current passing twice through the firewall. Better to bridge the connection on the other (engine bay) side of the wall.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

I will absolutely be doing that in the engine bay once I get to that stage, but I'm still about 6 to 8 months away from that part. Just focusing on making sure I have the dash electrical done right. It has brand new M&H wiring harnesses front to back as well, I didn't want to risk 50 plus year old wiring.

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1970 Barracuda 225 /6, 3spd on the floor, Blue/Blue

Ah, yeah, as a temporary deal it'll be fine.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

All done for now! I truly appreciate you and your time and help Dan, you are literally an invaluable member of this community and many others.

https://youtu.be/JwGwDNxRA1w?si=hqTBhl1X4VUtEZ26

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1970 Barracuda 225 /6, 3spd on the floor, Blue/Blue

Ashtray hinge needs some grease.

Also, after buying a whole brand new dash harness, and doing all of that cleaning and restoration work, you didn't make all your connections using cheap, unreliable crimp fittings, did you?

– Eric

What else would I use other than crimp fittings? I also used good shrink tubing on top of those to better secure and seal. I have plenty of time to redo it if there's better methodology, but I don't have a lot of money spend on $150 tool kits.

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1970 Barracuda 225 /6, 3spd on the floor, Blue/Blue

You worked really hard and did a really nice job on that dashboard, and spent so much money (wiring harnesses and powder coating aren't cheap), and have it set up so nicely, but the whole point of the dashboard is to present information and to facilitate control, and almost all of this is done through electrical current at about 13 volts DC.

The 12-14 volt electrical supply in your car is a very low voltage, and is very susceptible to interruption by poor connections, corrosion, etc., especially considering that cars tend to be in outdoor places, where temperatures vary and humidity can be high, and that cars are subject to extensive, constant vibration throughout their operational lives.
Automotive electrical systems can also carry a fair amount of current, so, should wires escape from where they're supposed to be, shorts can generate a lot of heat, messing up whatever is nearby (like other wires) or causing fires.

Home-crimped electrical connections, such as the ones seen in your videos, are notoriously unreliable. The tend to vibrate loose or to become corroded, tend to be poor at passing current, and can sometimes fall apart, exposing "hot" wires, even when they seem to be tightly connected when they are made up.
Most of the electrical connections in vehicles of the '60s and '70s DO have crimped-on connectors, but those are a completely different kind, and are generally produced by very expensive purpose-built industrial crimpers. Even so, we all know that after half a century, many of our cars' connections will have become resistive, and just not work as well as they did when the car came off the assembly line, hence the fairly profitable market in replacement wiring harnesses.

In the absence of one of those industrial crimpers (and the connectors that go with them), which can provide a decent, though not perfect, connection, the only proper way to connect wires in automotive applications is by soldering.
Soldering is not expensive, compared to the cost of those damned crimp-on butt connectors, and does not take long (although, in a mass-production setting, pennies can be saved by avoiding it).

Here's what you need to do:
• Get an inexpensive moderate-power soldering iron (best bet is generally flea markets / yard sales).
You don't need a giant 200W unit or a tiny 25W unit. Something in the middle.
• Get some solder. Rosin-core, about 50/50 tin/lead (Sn/Pb), NOT acid-core. (Best bet, again, is flea markets / yard sales – I've gotten a couple of 5# rolls for $5 a piece over the years, each is a lifetime supply). You may not be able to buy lead solder new anymore (definitely not if you live in Cali, where everything can kill you). If there's nobody around you clearing out their basement, find the nearest "old guy" (consider fathers, fathers in law, uncles, etc.), chat him up, and see if he'll give you a few few feet – it's all you need.
• Get some rosin flux. Yes, I know it's in the solder, but it's always good to have just a bit more. Amazon is fine.
• Get some more shrink tubing, and either a heat gun or a box of matches, or a Bic lighter, if you don't mind burning your thumb.

I'm sure there are plenty of excellent instructional videos about soldering on YouTube. If you like that sort of thing, then go for it.
Basically, to make a butt connection, you strip the wires, about 1/2" each, then you twist the strands of each, then you slip on an appropriate length of shrink tubing (say, 1/4-1/2" overlap on each end), then you wrap them around each other in some facsimile of a Western Union splice (each wraps around the "back" of the other). then you (optionally) smear on some flux, then you apply the hot soldering iron the the center of the splice, with the solder pressed against the opposite side of the wire, so that the soldering iron heats the wire, the wire heats the solder, the solder melts, and flows into the wire. Stop when the solder has flowed into the joint well, and before you melt all the insulation off. Finally, slide the shrink tubing into position and heat to shrink.

This can all be done pretty quickly once you get the hang of it, and will provide a joint that will never vibrate apart, will never corrode, and will always conduct the full amount of current, with no appreciable resistance.

After all the work you've already done, you might as well make it last longer than you'll be alive.

– Eric

Don't let MDChanic's imagination run away with you. Good crimp connections are superior to soldered ones for applications like cars and airplanes where vibration is a factor. See here (or if that link won't let you read it, try this one ). Additional info here and here.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

I have for many years use bare crimp on connectors. Coated the wires with an anti-corrosion compound and then used shrink wrap over the final connection. They look good and I have never had a problem yet.

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2 Mopars come with Spark plug tubes. One is a world class, racing machine. The other is a 426 CI. boat anchor!

12.70 @ 104.6

Alright, Dan. I beg, respectfully, to disagree.

In my response, I was talking (obviously) about cheap, low-quality, commonly available, insulated, automotive crimped butt connectors, such as those visible in the OP's video of his completed dashboard project linked above.

I was (just as obviously) not talking about making crimped connections for airplanes or the military, and, in fact, I said,

Your citations below are irrelevant because,
a). they do not refer to the type of crimp fittings I was discussing, and
b). they DO refer to the kind of crimp fittings I exempted, ie: those that are complex and expensive, and are specifically NOT the type that the OP has actually used.

Your first citation says,

Your second citation is the same as your first citation.



Your third citation says, and I quote:
edit: During my initial skim of the citation, I failed to understand that this article is, in fact, a critique of an article, a one-sided conversation, if you will. In reading it, one must understand that the text in black is the original article, while that in red is the subsequent critique. The text that I quoted is from the original article. The critique does not disagree with this general thesis, however, and, in fact, argues with the original author's assertion that one must have a mechanical connection separate from the solder (a crimp), in addition to the solder, which the critic emphasizes comprises the essential part of the connection,



Your fourth citation says:
I submit that none of the OP's equipment meets any military specification, so this entire citation is irrelevant.


(all Bold and Italics mine)


So, while you may assert that my advice is incorrect, your own citations, in fact, support my thesis, which is that commercially-available home-use crimping tools are inadequate to the task, and provide a connection that is inferior to a soldered joint.

The fact that good connections can be obtained using very different, much more expensive, specialized crimpers would only be relevant if the OP, or anyone else reading this for that matter, actually had such crimpers, and the specialized lugs that are used with them, which he does not.


OP, I would recommend that you actually read Dan's third citation, as its author provides much more detail and better explanations of the points I was briefly making in my post above.


– Eric

ps: And please Dan, don't be pejorative. It doesn't flatter, and in the end it fails to achieve its desired effect. We should all be able to discuss things with the utmost mutual respect here, without feeling, or incurring any personal animosity. I certainly hold none.

No, you "beg" to make arguments where they're neither warranted nor merited. When I was younger I had your same hobby of stirring up poop just for laffs, so I recognize it when I see it. I don't claim to be an oracle or anything; many topics have many valid answers, and there's plenty of room for discussion, but that's not what you're doing. I said I was done the other day when you tried to start one of your recreational arguments in another thread—and I meant it.

user [MDchanic] is <IGNORED>

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

Ooooh. Testy.

And doesn't address any of the points I made using his own citations.

Shame he'll not see any of my further comments.

Ta ta, Dan. I actually thought we were friends.

– Eric