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MG MGA - New harness recommendations

1958 1500 MGA Roadster.

I'm beginning a second restoration on the car. While the car is new to me the mechanicals look good, runs, stops and shifts reliably.

Looks like the place to start is the cockpit, 1st up the dashboard. Which points me to the wiring harness since there are several suspisious splices in the engine compartment.

I'm looking for recommendations of which and where to buy the harness. I'm not looking for 100% authenticy, mostly reliability with moderate adherance to the orignial design.

I'm leaning to Moss #356-171, fabric bound, PVC. All opinions are welcome.
Brian Denis

Hi Brian. I recently installed a new MGA 1600 Moss wiring harness for a friend. It works perfectly, and the colour coding was accurate. The harness was well made, and had the cloth covering on the outside. Barney Gaylord's website has some good info on replacing the wiring harness. Good Luck. GLenn
Glenn

I have seen more than a few "ORIGINAL" M.G. Wiring Harnesses where WIRES WERE SIMPLY PUSHED THROUGH THE "BULLET CONNECTORS" AND BENT BACK, DEPENDING ON A "PINCH FIT" AT THE "BUTT CONNECTOR" FOR THE CONNECTION! The "BULLET CONNECTORS" & "BUTT CONNECTORS" were NEITHER SOLDERED NOR CRIMPED! As an Electronics Technician AND "Shady-Tree M.G. Mechanic" of OVER 40 YEARS this absolutely HORRIFIED me! How could that EVER have been a "GOOD CONNECTION"? Although I've seen it in writing that CRIMPING is "BETTER" than SOLDERING, I disagree unless you have the OVER $100 "MIL-SPEC CRIMPER" that gets REPLACED OR CALIBRATED every 1,000 hours!
wattswh1

Thats normal. In fact you can still buy those types of connectors. Look at a comparitive year AH or triumph and youll see the same sort of thing, if the wiring hasnt been messed with.
jmhills

William,
You may be correct with the super crimper, but I can bet that most MG people will put no more than 4-6 hours on any crimper that they use, so a non-calibrated crimper will most probably work fairly well. Just crimp and then do a nice test pull on a couple of the connectors.
mike parker

This thread was discussed between 23/07/2005 and 27/07/2005

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This thread is from the archive. The Live MG MGA BBS is active now.