The Snakes Alive CMP Wiring Project

[Jacques Reed]

Good Day,

With another year closing I thought it was time to finish off another loose end. I wanted to rewire the wire tails on the various lights on my F15-A. All of them had hard brittle insulation and the light base contacts on some were in poor shape.

Backtracking a bit: A year ago I had a local gasket manufacturing company make me some 15mm diameter fibre washers to replace the base contacts on those lights. Interestingly they did not stamp them out but used a high pressure water jet to cut them.

My originals had a small eyelet in the middle into which the wire was soldered. I note some light bases used a rivet on the wire end instead, but all mine had eyelets.

I obtained some brass eyelets online and installed them in the disks after drilling the holes for them. The material was too tough to use a punch and anyway I wanted to make the holes as accurately as possible on centre.

I made up a jig to hold the wire and base contact for soldering using a piece of wood. I drilled a 5/8" diameter 2mm deep recess with a wood spade bit then followed through on the drill press with a 4mm diameter hole. This made a nice firm fit to hold the wire and located the contact right in the center. I filed a groove in a soldering iron tip to make contact with the wire and rounded the back to contact the eyelet. Didn't show it here, but I used masking tape to hold it down in the jig during soldering.

With a couple practice runs it was a simple job to get a perfectly soldered contact. In fact, looking at my originals I am much closer on center than the originals in some cases. Two things to remember however: tin the wire end first and do not hold the soldering iron tip to the eyelet and wire for more than about 5-10 seconds. My first attempt heated the wire too much and made the plastic insulation swell which made it hard to remove from the jig and one to be scrapped.

Hope this is of some interest and a Merry Christmas to all.

Cheers,

[Jacques Reed]

Good Day All,

Tidied up another loose end- no pun intended, with the cowl wiring for an Australian CMP two headlight cowl.

Finished the small harness from the terminal block to the dip switch thanks to Keith Webb's diagram. Noticed a hole in the splash guard which just begged having a clip there to keep the harness from rubbing on the clutch pedal arm.
Checking two other splash shields all three had an identical hole at the same place so obviously it had some purpose. I will take a punt that it was for a clip for the harness to keep it off the clutch arm.
Without a sample of that harness, I took an educated guess at the wire lengths. Possibly longer than original but they can be shortened if good info comes to hand.

I also fabricated the harness from the terminal block to the lights. I used a very rough original as the pattern which gave me accurate wire lengths. I also added turn signal wires to it with bullet connectors for easy removal should I ever want to remove them.

Although not 100% original it is as close as possible as I could make it. I used fork terminals or ring terminals where required and attached them to the terminal block in the same manner as shown in Keith's diagram. Covered the ring and fork terminals with silicon rubber self-vulcanizing tape.

Original harnesses were covered in a braided sleeve at manufacture but I used bitumen-impregnated cotton loom. Slightly bigger diameter than original harness to accommodate the two extra turn signal wires.

The lower two original unused terminals were just right for the turn signals.

Hope this is of some interest.

Cheers.

[Keith Webb]

That's an essential clamp on the splash shield, great work Jacques.

[Jacques Reed]

Hi Keith,

Thanks again for your help.

Here is a revised cowl wiring diagram based on the diagram and photos you supplied which may be of help to others. It shows the corrected entry of the various ring and fork terminals on the terminal block.

I made the turn signal wires an extra 4" longer than the side light harness wires to avoid wrong connections. Yellow is the colour for the sidelights and for Falk turn signals front left side.

As previously mentioned, the lengths for the side light and headlight wires are correct as per my original sample. The wire lengths for the dip switch harness are my best estimate. If anyone has an original harness for the dip switch I will gladly revise my wire lengths if they are different.

Cheers,

[Jordan Baker]

Just wondering if anyone has some photos showing where the rear harnes goes from the change over switch to the light positions? The harness I got from Vintage Wiring Harness Australia doesn’t seem to make sense

The truck is for a C15a. It shouldn’t make really any difference if it’s cab 11/12 vs 13

[Jacques Reed]

Good Day,

Following on from the "Toggle Switch" thread in the restoration section here is a revised diagram of the later Ford CMP light switch wiring. Revision shows the internal common connections at the input terminals.

Note: This is for the later light switch panel which used specialized TPST switches to control defined groups of lights. Earlier light switch panels operated individual types of lights only and can be operated using SPST switches.

All lengths taken from an original harness. Wire numbers and colour codes as per Ford wiring diagram.

Hope this may be of help to other restorers.

Since posting this I had a look at another light switch assembly and found some interesting differences. At first I thought it had been jury rigged using a SPST switch at the Tail light. Upon close inspection and tracing out the original wires it appears it could be an original setup also. The jumps were factory crimped and when I analyzed it, TPST switches were not required at every location to obtain the lighting combinations. See my comments in "Toggle Switches"

Attached is the original wiring showing the crimped terminals and another wiring diagram using the switches in the photo.

Cheers,