New Electric Brake Wiring For An Old 72 Truck

[Hayseed4]

So as I have been restoring my truck, I wanted to get the original 1971 K&H electric brake controller back in operation. When the truck was new they used a camper wiring harness and extended the wires a bit to make it to the back bumper. While this was clever, it ran a separate wire for the electric brakes, and it did not utilize the positive wire for trailer accessories. So I wanted a better way. Since I put a complete new wiring harness in the truck, I am less than excited about cutting and splicing into it. Plus every cut in the harness exposes the wires to corrosion with the road grime and salt. So the question now is how to accomplish the wiring without cutting the new harness, and make it look fairly original.

[jocko]

a good solder and shrink wrap and it'll be fine. No crimp connectors tho...

[Hayseed4]

So what I have decided to do is make my own harness and base it off of a camper wiring harness. To start with, I took stock of all the old wiring I had. I had the old rear wiring harness, and the old intermediate harness that had been spliced at least once, and I also had a goodly length of new 7 pin wire from a semi trailer. I cut the female end off of the rear harness and the male end off of the intermediate harness leaving about 6 inches of a tail. I positioned the 7 pin wire and cut a long strip of insulation off so that I could run the positive to a block terminal on the drivers side fender. I plan on also adding an inline 30 or 40 amp waterproof glass fuse.

[Hayseed4]

So Joko, beat me to it, I was definitely going to solder and shrink wrap the few connections I am going to have. I paired my two pig tails together and then soldered and shrink wrapped it into the 7 pin wire making sure to write down which color wire on the pig tail went to which one on the 7 pin. I used the following color pairing.
Red to inline fuse and power.
White to body ground.
Blue to the variable resistor on my fire wall for the electric brakes
Green to the dark green on the pig tail for the right stop and directional
Yellow to the yellow on the pig tail for the left stop and directional
Brown to the brown on the pig tail for the tail and license light
Black to light green on the pig tail for the back up lights

[Hayseed4]

After soldering and shrink wrapping it, I taped everything up to make it look nice and keep the wires together.

[Hayseed4]

Then I mounted it in the firewall making sure to put some nolox on the connections to ensure a good connection. the ground to the cab frame utilized the previous camper ground screw. I straightened all of the wires for a good appearance and ran the blue and red through the upper channel. the red one will go under the fender to appear with the fender mounted block. The 7pin wire will follow the frame to the back and then get connected to the bumper mounted outlet.

[Hayseed4]

When I get the rest of the brake controller mounted I will include some pictures including the brake line connection in the cab. Well I hope this works out as well as I think it will and maybe somebody can use this as well. please feel free to let me know what you think.