I am willing to spend whatever it takes to make my W-200 '68 electrically sound and avoid all issues pertaining to electricity ! bRewire harnesses, gauges...whatever. I know I will always be trying to find the ground fault, but I am eager to drive the rig without imagining where the electrical problems are. HELP

Whatever you choose, for a totally trouble-free electrical system you must treat every single connection as if your life depends on it; only that way will the whole system be reliable. I've done the wiring harness for the last 8 of the 10 Tidewater Mopar Club giveaway cars.

Some of our people advocated using an aftermarket universal harness; I looked into them, but generally they seemed all to be designed around GM components - for example, not one that I looked at would work with a Mopar 3sp wiper w/o major modifications. Therefore I decided to repair and modify the factory harnesses.

In each case I carefully removed the original harness while documenting how it was connected and installed, carefully repaired & modified it, and then reinstalled it. The factory service manual wiring diagrams showing the color codes and connectors are both essential and inexpensive, and it is important to keep good notes. It is *much* easier to remove the harness from the car and then fix it, than to try fix it in place. Entirely new harnesses can be bought or fabricated for you if yours is too far gone for repair, but I've personally always been able to use donor harnesses from other cars to repair the original.

There are many books and articles on the process of repair, a quick search will turn them up, but I'd like to add my 2 points:

1) Often you'll find that the plastic in the bulkhead is partially melted. Many times the factory reused bulkhead connector housings for a number of other models and years.

2) Don't wrap the harness in sticky electrical tape - use the special non-sticky vinyl wrap or cloth jacket as appropriate. I use self-vulcanizing tape at the end of the vinyl wrap (rather than tie off the vinyl wrap) to ease any subsequent modifications.

Good luck!