willysmjeeps.com

Working on my a1, and one of the reasons i bought it was a full complete, non-altered harness. The issue is that its really brittle. When i unplugged the back lights, half the ends broke off, and others are cracked badly at the ends. I know about shrink wrapping the ends, or electrical taping them. Is there a different way to get some of the elasticity/bendieness back ? I just cant see shrink wrapping the whole harness, and electrical tapping it still doesn't help with the sharp brittle bits, and wire cracking, it will just come off soon enough. It's also not in my budget to buy a whole new harness, espec since mine still works.

In a word, no.

I feel your pain, but if the insulation and wire is as brittle
as you say you are one broken wire away from a possible
fire and loss of your jeep. A couple of wires can short together
and you are toast.

You can replace all of the wiring one wire at a time. The ends
can be reused, or new ends bought. Wire can be bought as
well. In addition, military wire harnesses are available for sale for
a fraction of the new M38A1 harnesses although some
modifications may be necessary

I believe the going ball park for a new harness is around
700 bucks. Replacing your jeep would be a lot more.

Just my two cents.

Take care,

Usually the harness ages more quickly at the exposed wire terminals where they are handled more often and usually have no wrapping to protect them. If the wire feels flexible and doesn't flake apart further from the end then just butt splice a piece of new wire at each brittle end and install new terminal parts or re-use the re-usable ones.




Butt splice


Insert & crimp wires.





Then slip a short piece of heat shrink over the splice and go another ten years.

As already mentioned if the harness has aged / deteriorated to the point it is crumbling at all locations then beware, an electrical fire is quick and deadly to your jeep especially with 24 volts pushing it.

A well planned rewire, one wire at a time or duplicating the harness by removing it carefully and tacking it to a sheet of plywood for a pattern is not as difficult as one would think .

For small sections I have used liquid electrical tape. I have used it on my horn button, convoy drive, and a couple of other places. It has decent flex until it fully dries several days later.

I'm working on getting the our mechanics to give me a heads up before they throw wires away so I can get the connectors for guys on the forum that might need some. I've got a little ziplock bag so far of connectors if you need a few I can slap em in a little flat rate bag and send you a few. I'll take a pic and let you see what I've got when I get back to my house, I'm 1,000 miles away with family for christmas right now.

Dude,
Are you ever home? You have to be racking up lots
of frequent flyer miles, lol!

Good for you gas prices are low.

Thanks for watching out for us. Travel safe.