Rewiring would be a big job but I don't think it would be particuarlly difficult with the car assembled, you would need to take out the seats and dash and some trim panels to do it properly but otherwise it would be fairly simple just time consuming.

When pulling the looms out of the sill tie a wire/rope to the end and middle so you can use them to pull the new section back in.

Personally I would try and fix what you have unless its in a really bad way.

 

You would also have to take sections of the carpeting/underfelt out. It's a pretty nasty job depending on how much time you are prepared to devote. The rewiring took us a long while even with just a painted body shell inside & out. People who have not rewired an S Type are likely to see it as easier than reality. Things don't just pull through as one would wish. They bind & fight you in many areas if you don't want to damage the harness. e.g. finding the B Pillar connectors in the side harnesses that are in a blind 3 part sill. Things like twin fuel pumps complicate issues etc. It's not a Mk2 with 2 part sills etc..

I would fix what you have with the help of an Auto Electrician if necessary.

When I see the rustbucket Mk2 that Homer brought back to the living I'm truly impressed. I would have sent it to the crushers. At least I had a totally rust free shell/car. If Homer costed in his time I hate to think what the cost would have been. His idea of difficult/time consuming & other's would likely vary/differ.

I salute him for saving a car!

 

The Majority of S Type Harnesses, Numerous minor bits missing. e.g. horn wiring.


Column Harness ~ MOD. Auto more complex






Similar to S Type, Connects to dash harness pigtail that runs under passenger carpet & pops through O ring in tunnel.
S Type version wired & terminated for new OD inhibitor & Reverse light switches. Long lead goes to OD solenoid.



Excludes interior rear centre light harness











Centre Panel Harness.

 

At present, my Mk2 has both outer sills cut off. It still looks pretty difficult to thread a harness that goes both up the B-posts and through to the back of the car. If I were to re-wire, I'd be tempted to abandon the route through the sills and make a conduit along the floor inside the car.

 

you say that everything was working fine before you replaced the Turn Signals Flasher?

so there's the problem, the Flasher. What is the Brand and Part Number on the flasher itself ? Is it the original style of Lucas flasher or an aftermarket flasher? does it have 3 connectors or 4 ?

 

wow Peter I certainly would not want to have to rewire a car. That is a factory job. A remanufacture. Like the rebuild of the 3.8 engine has me exhausted and I swear I am never doing anything like it again. However there is a LHD MG-Y that needs a complete remanufacture if you like to do that. Totally rusted through job.

Fortunately the wiring in my S type is unmolested and intact. Any new wiring has been done by me very very carefully and without accidents. New stereo with 4 speakers, spot lights, emergency flasher, electric door mirrors, center mount stop lamp. All done by yours truly. Hey if it's one hot and 1 ground, I can do it. No digital anything thanks.

 

Peter ~ you are working with such a small hole to get the wire up the B Pillar & capturing the side harness connectors blind was a battle from the outer sill gap. These bodies were not pressed/assembled all that well to achieve exterior alignment. We had a piece of plate partially obstructing the left hand hole that I finally took a Cone Shaped Rotary File on a drill to, to be able to pull the connectors through. We battled in a number of places. Thank heavens I had a Fluke meter with a continuity audio signal & extended leads. You could clip one end & go scratching at the other end of the car with the other probe & hear that you had the correct wire. Consider this with your propriety 3 piece sill you intend.

 

Jose, Glyn, I'm certainly not planning on any re-wiring. Everything (apart from the clock) worked when I took it apart and the harness looks OK. I will run some extra cables through to the back of the car in case I think of a useful accessory or modif later.

Don't ask me about the quality of the original construction of the bodies. I've read that at least once in the 1960s Jaguar sent a large number back to the Pressed Steel Company because of poor quality. Measurements with a water level gauge indicate that my MK2 should have been one of them. All the 'chassis' and suspension points are level to within 1mm. However, the left side rear wheel arch and the adjacent door post are 4 to 5mm high. Looking at the welded joints inside the car to the rear of the back door, it's clear it was put together like that: flanged edges bent down to meet and others badly aligned. I've joked about taking it back down the road to the old Pressed Steel factory, but I don't expect BMW-Mini would honour any warranty.

 

Cheers Glyn, I don't think it's that hard but opinions may vary based on experience ☺️ when I replaced the entire loom in my S type (a bare shell like yours was) it wasn't a bad job just took a while.

 

The trick is to get some good stout single core building electrical cable or something similar, pus that through the sill and then tie or tape the loom to it and put it out pulling the new loom in. Doing this method the LH side loom took me e around 30 minutes on my current mk2 project.

 

Yes but you have a Mk2 with 2 piece sills. The S Type has 3 piece sills to stiffen the car. How did you capture the B post connectors? Peter is installing 3 piece sills of his own design

I fully appreciate that it was the first S Type I'd rewired & was learning all the way, but when I look at what you have done I think you have far more patience than I do. My experience lies in different areas. You would not want me to weld something for you. My restorer/helper is a genius at metal fabrication. He will build you anything well & accurately & makes working on an English Wheel look like child's play. He does a perfect job of any kind of welding & has all the kit.

I don't know the OP's skill set but I think he might curse trying to rewire his assembled car. I think he should diagnose & fix what he has, probably starting with the last thing he touched prior to the problem occurring.

 

The best way to do it is use the old loom to pull in the draw wires as you remove it, alternatively put them in (the draw wire) before you weld the sill on.

I didn't do this on my S Type so I had to start from scratch and just used a draw wire fished through, I don't remember it being difficult.

Fully agree the OP should avoid rewiring unless absolutely necessary and even if it was it doesn't mean the sill looms have to be changed as their issue will be with the main loom.

 

None of this explains how one easily catches the connectors to the sub harnesses that go up the B pillars on an S Type. In Peters case the pre welding on the sill trick would work with the possibility of damaging the harness but not with an assembled car.

Anyway I think we have discussed this enough. Possibly easy for some, less so for others. Like most things in life dependent on experience, skill set & time.

 

I've never done it and hope I'll not need to, but I understand that the trick is to have a separate draw string for each branch of the harness. And each draw string has to be labelled (for example by tight knots) at each end. There would be one string for the branch that goes up the B-post and another for the one that goes all the way along the sill. Then, with suitably judicious and simultaneous string pulling, a new harness can be installed. Of course, you still have to find a way past all the invisible obstructions.

The advice that Geoff Maycock used to give was to wrap with tape any part of the harness that you had access to if it looked at all warn or looked as though it might suffer in the future. That way most re-wiring can be avoided.

 

And the draw strings would have to be put in place when you pull out the old harnesses. A luxury I did not have. My first restorer that I fired just pulled out the harnesses sans draw strings so I had to start from scratch. As did the plant.

 

Ouch! Well it was obvious to you and me that you attach the strings to the ends of the old harness, but clearly not to all. Restorers should do a course in either topology or Greek mythology... .

 

Yes. The plant probably used springy metal electricians pull tapes or similar. That's what I used in the end to pull the main side harnesses. Could not make that work from the B post holes.