Electrical gremlins

[mjr45]

I am finding more and more electrical issues in my 75. The primary culprit is in the rat's nest of wires and connectors in the passenger side under the dash. I have found multiple wires pulled (corroded) out of connectors, so I'm looking to replace all of the connectors, any ideas where to get them. Right now I've had to jumper several wires over the connectors to get things like the Hazard and turn signals to work. Any help would be appreciated.

[SteveJ]

Vintage Connections will have many of the connectors you need.

[Kurbycar32]

My gremlins were minor but i was able to clean the heck out of those connectors and now they work fine. Disconnect the battery and open each connector, hose them down with electrical contact cleaner and get a wire brush on all metal contacts. After clean put a tiny dab of dielectric grease on each metal connector and reconnect, repeat for each connector. I did this on every connection and the fuse box when i pulled my dash and have had zero gremlins since, i was even able to remove 2 jumpers the PO had installed and revert to the factory harness.

[zKars]

AH yes, the old 280 passenger side rats nest connector corrosion problem. Likely the result of past coolant leaks and maybe water seapage from above (windshield and cowl) that have soaked them resulting in your "current" mess. (sorry for the pun)

Sadly, the round pin 280 connector styles do not seem to have a replacement source. vintageconnections.com has many of the earlier 240 style connectors and pins, but for 280's you best bet may be a new new(er) wiring harness. Put an advert in here for someone wrecking a same-year car that has these harnesses in better shape. Each year has its little differences, you generally can't swap around.

Using any other style of connector (thyere are many, Weatherpac, Deutch etc) is tedious as you have to splice every wire and keep track of everything. Do-able, but not by everyone.

If its a say 10-20 wires, I might be tempted to do a slightly better job of exactly what you've done and do a careful cut/solder/shrink splice new wire to "jumper" out the bad connections altogether. Do them one at time for ease and safety.

Clean the rest as best you can. Products like "DeOxit" are much better at removing corrosion than the run of the mill alcohol based electrical connector cleaners you can get at Radio shack and those sort of place. Good luck

[mjr45]

Thanx for the input. Right now I'm tempted to cut and splice all the wires with the exception of the C-1 to C-7 main connectors, what a PIA!

[az240z]

zcars is correct as each year were different but almost all the connectors are the same. So you could do the job of rebuilding your harness using another harness. I bought 3 different harnesses just for this purpose. Although I never completely rebuilt a harness I had all the connectors to replace the ones that went bad.