Rewiring baby elan

[calgary67elan]

Hello all - long-time lurker, first time poster...
I am about to undergo a complete re-wire of my 67 S3. I am also going to switch to neg ground, an alternator and headlights that are brighter than a candle while I have all the rotted wire out.

A question for all of you. What lenghts of the specific coloured wires will I need? The common wire I can buy cheaply by the roll but many of the websites list by the foot for the properly colour coded stuff. Is there a resource on the web for this or should I go ahead and take the loom out of the car and then order each specific wire (plus extra for mistakes...)?

Any recommendations for headlights which will make this tiny car appear like something to get out of the way for???

Thanks for your input.
Paul

[lotusbc]

Hi from Vancouver, I rewired quite a bit of my S4. We are fortunate that the British auto industry adopted general standards of colour coding and you can likely source most of the various colour combinations from a good British parts supplier. Use your manual as a guide in case someone else has previously replaced anything. Stick to the colours as indicated, to help if any future electrical work is required. You'd be only guessing at lengths unless you get the loom out first. Make sure to get a stock of bullet connectors while you're at it. Good luck, it really is pretty easy, clean work you can do indoors! Steve

[Greg Foster]

Hi Paul,
I am just in the process of completing rewiring of my 67SS with a new harness I purchased from British Wiring, which you can find on the net. My car has rockers instead of toggle switches and the p.o. added an amp guage and oil temp/ water temp guage. British wiring supplies all the bullet connectors, and has an extensive amount of wire, relays, and general electrical fixtures including harness tape and crimping tools for the bullets.
I found the wiring harness to be relatively simple and had a few wires left over which weren't used in my car. The harness I ended up purchasing from them was for an S2. It seems Lotus used what they had on the shelf to make it happen even though my car was closer to an S4. The new harness was way too long and some Item didn't fit because of the new guage layout.
If you are rewiring and building your own harness I would recommend.
1) When removing the harness, take pictures of everything before and during disassembly.
2) Make a drawing of the dash and lable all switches and guages, lights etc. Also make a drawing showing where the wires as colored fit on each of the switches, and instruments. Also note with drawings where the wires fit on the light relays.
Try to determine if everything is in working order befor disassembling anything. If you can, get it working first so you know if there are any other problems.
3) Keep the old harness in tact. You can remove the harness tape but try to keep the wires organized as they are bundled.
There is about 1 1/2 feet of harness which is extra too long .They used the same harness for lhd and rhd cars.
If you are going to keep originality, it is probably cheaper to buy a made up harness, extra bullet connnector and crimping tool. If you are going for efficiency and practicallity then you may want to consider adding a fuse panel and modern multi pin connectors so you can protect the new wiring with properly sized fuses and wire guages. Boosting lighting to accomodate HID headlamps or halogen you may want to check out www.dimebank.com/tech/WiringDrivingLights.html for some more info. There is also a nice Headlamp relay diagram and or kit available at www.advanceautowire.com/headlights.htm.
4) Buy a Brother labler or similar and lable each wire as you remove it. Keep wires bundled as they fit individual switches.
5) Note and photograph how the loom is run both in the engine compartment and under the dash. Especially under the dash the wires are in tight spaces.
6) Enlarge the wiring diagrams for S1-2, S3 cars so you can see the wires and where they go. Any print shop will do this. MAKE SURE YOU CAN READ THE DIAGRAMS!!
TOOLS
Get yourself an automatic reset breaker for testing the wires. They break at about 12 - 15 Amps and have a lead on each end with alligagor clips. Reset time is a few seconds. The breaker will click on and off if there is a problem. Set it up between the + battery post and the main Positive terminal lead. These are available from Snap - On , Mac, Matco etc.

Also Purchase a Test light which hooks up to both terminals of the battery. These have LEDs which indicate positive or negative connections. they also have a switch which allows you to make a ground or power through the test light to check things like dash buibs or fuel guage. The test light will have a built in circuit breaker also in case you test in the wrong direction. Also available through the tool man About $100 and well worth it!
Car Quest sells spade connectors by the box of 50 with heat shrink collars. Buy both male and female along with splices and eyelets for various guages of wire. Buy a good crimping tool.
British wiring also has heat shrink adhesive sealing tubing in 4 foot sections.
I went to Lowes and picked up a small butane torch for shrinking the collars. They work great for many things!
Before connecting any Lucor, spade connectors or bullet connectors together, clean them with steel wool to get the oxidation off and then coat liberally with Copper anti -seize.
Type 45 and I am sure many other people on the site have plenty of great info about making the harness more efficient.
Good luck
Greg

[calgary67elan]

Thanks for your help guys. I think I am going to keep partial originality by using the proper colours for everything but upgrade with a fuse panel hidden somewhere out of the way. I'd rather lose a few points with the purists (no offence intended) and keep the car from burning down the house...

Does anyone know of a british wire supplier in Alberta?
Thanks
Paul

[Frank Howard]

Thanks Greg for your well written and well thought out answer.

4) Buy a Brother labler or similar and lable each wire as you remove it.

The only suggestion I have is rather than dealing with a label maker, go to practically any hardware store and ask for the sheets of numbers that they sell in the electrical department. The sheets have two of each number and you simply stick one to the wire and the other to what it connects to.

My experience with the wiring is that there is no difference between a LH wiring harness and a RH wiring harness. For both cars, the main harness comes through the firewall on the left and goes to the center of the dash where it attaches to all of the switches and gauges located there. If it is a LH car, the harness then travels back to the left side of the dash to make the final connections and if it is a RH car, the harness travels to the right side of the dash to make the final connections. I modified mine so the wires that end up connected to the left side of the dash go straight there from the firewall rather than going to the center and then back to the left. So at this point in time, my harness will not work in a RH car however I did get rid of a lot of wire. I did it for simplification rather than for adding lightness.

[oldokie]

As to the headlights, I've had good luck with cibie 7" replacements with 100/80 watt H4s. I'm not sure they're legal, but an Elan sits low enough that they don't hit people's mirrors.

[RotoFlexible]

My experience with the wiring is that there is no difference between a LH wiring harness and a RH wiring harness. For both cars, the main harness comes through the firewall on the left and goes to the center of the dash where it attaches to all of the switches and gauges located there. If it is a LH car, the harness then travels back to the left side of the dash to make the final connections and if it is a RH car, the harness travels to the right side of the dash to make the final connections.

That explains the U-turn! I have my harness out and staked to a board. I was planning to rebuild it exactly as it was but this encounrages me to rearrange the breakouts. (I am also adding and subtracting wires as needed.)

[robb4100]

I just completed wiring the dash using a prebuilt harness and chose to leave the extra length in the harness to make it easier to work on the dash if I needed to replace switches etc in the future. It is a little less tidy behind the dash than it would be if it were all cut to size.