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I visited the Museum of Flight in Seattle and saw a vintage radio rack restoration.
The wiring harness was completely hand-soldered with cloth insulation, no modern connectors in sight. Has anyone here ever had to work on something that old, and what was the biggest headache?
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felix1551mo ago
My granddad's 1962 Ford pickup had a wiring harness like that, all cloth wrapped and brittle as old newspaper. Trying to trace a short in that mess was a weekend killer... every wire looked the same faded color. The solder joints would just crumble if you breathed on them wrong. I kinda miss how simple it was, but man I don't miss the smell of burning cloth insulation.
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morgan3161mo ago
Know exactly what you mean @felix155 - had a buddy who tried to restore a '64 Galaxy and spent three weekends just sorting out the dash wires. The cloth wrapping would flake off in his hands, and he ended up using a multimeter on every single wire just to figure out what was what. He said the worst part was finding a melted splice that had been wrapped in electrical tape like four decades ago, totally fused to the bundle. He ended up just ripping the whole harness out and buying a reproduction one, which felt like cheating but saved his sanity. Still, he kept the old one in a box in his garage, says it's a good reminder of how far cars have come.
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