Extending wiring loom.

[procrastinator]

What would you all say is the best way to extend a wiring loom?  Can think of 3 ways, solder a length in, cut and crimp plugs on  or go right back to original plugs unpick and put in a longer wire.
If a bulkhead plug is available that might be the way to go, but I havent found any yet. Something ex military maybe?

[gryphon]

I tend to prefer crimping over soldering for any wire that's going to flex and vibrate, but butt splices are often horrible ugly things in a harness.

If the wires are small you can make quite a neat job of it by finding a crimp on pin big enough to crimp both wires in it, cut the pin section off and just use the 'U' part of the crimp to join the two wires end to end (overlapping through the crimp) then covering in a length of 3:1 adhesive lined heat shrink. It gives a much less bulky join than butt crimps that is still robust.

If you need connectors I've been pretty impressed by the chinese superseal ones: www.aliexpress.com/item/32970187762.html
I bought a set of the chinese ones, then one genuine one from RS at the cost of about 15 of the chinese ones... and could not tell the difference looked the same, felt the same, deformed the same. I've used chinese ones ever since.

[droopsnoot]

I wouldn't add extra connectors as it's an extra point of failure. I extended the wires between my Lumenition box and distributor a few years ago, and although I used proper Ripaults connectors the same as the rest of the loom uses, it still caused an intermittent engine cut-out on the M6. Removing the connector and soldering the wires together has fixed it so far.

Your third option is probably the "best" way if you can - unpick it all and replace the wires with longer ones. If you do end up splicing wires either by crimping or by solder, make the joins a little "staggered" so you don't get the "pig in a snake" effect when you tape the loom back up.

[Bolf]

in the past when i've done transplants , i've got an identical loom from the scrapyard and cut off the plug on the loom being extended and the plug with maximum length on the pigtails to extend with , if that makes sense! , Staggering is a good idea on over 3 core

[tristanh]

Sept 12, 2019 14:21:33 GMT procrastinator said:

What would you all say is the best way to extend a wiring loom?  Can think of 3 ways, solder a length in, cut and crimp plugs on  or go right back to original plugs unpick and put in a longer wire.
If a bulkhead plug is available that might be the way to go, but I havent found any yet. Something ex military maybe?

Cheap bulkhead plugs on the Bad Obsession Motorsports shop.
www.badobsessionmotorsport.co.uk/product/34-pin-delphi-connector-kit/