[canadian.gravelynut]

I am working on restoring a 1967 424. All of the wiring is a mess so I went back to the wiring diagram and decided to replace all the wires. The problem that I have with that is I can not find a supplier for the red wire with a white stripe.

Does any body know where I can find color coded wire as I have not found any. I am looking for 14 gage

 

[Richard-tx]

Finding wire with colors like red with a white strip is near impossibility. When I do a rewire and something like that occurs, I will change the color altogether. Gravely, in the early days used almost every color in the rainbow. I think it was a little overkill. In this case I would use either a red or a violet wire for the regulator to ignition switch. Violet is not used on the tractor.

I use THHN or equivalent stranded wire. THHN is much better than vinyl insulation.

 

[lt4xtreme]

Finding wire with colors like red with a white strip is near impossibility. When I do a rewire and something like that occurs, I will change the color altogether. Gravely, in the early days used almost every color in the rainbow. I think it was a little overkill. In this case I would use either a red or a violet wire for the regulator to ignition switch. Violet is not used on the tractor.

I use THHN or equivalent stranded wire. THHN is much better than vinyl insulation.

Try eficonnection I use a lot of THHN automotive grade wire and terminals from them. They have 22,20,18,16 gauge wire in the red w/white stripe and just about any other color combo you can want. I have built a few harnesses to install Chevy LS or LT1/4 engines (6.0 LS in a 01 S10 for a friend, LT4 in my 99 S10 Xtreme, LT1 going in my 86 Monte Carlo SS, and getting ready to do a 6.0 LS in a 70 Camaro)(that where my username came from LT4XTREME) When the pcm has 2 connectors with 80 wires each it's very important that the factory wire colors are used to make it servicable and to match the wiring diagrams. The 16 ga red w/white stripe wire is $0.45 a foot 10 foot minimum. Jason

 

[beaner2u]

http://www.eficonnection.com/eficonnection/Wire.aspx

 

[Richard-tx]

I am sorry, but if his regulator is bolted to the dash as shown in the IPL, then all that is needed is about 8 inches of wire since the red/white wire goes from the regulator to the ignition switch. If it were mine I would grab whatever color was handy and put it on.

If I had some wire that he wanted, I would drop it in an envelope and mail it to Ontario.

In contrast, almost of the wires on the control panel of a Electromotive locomotive are gray except for the few heavier gauge wires which are blue. There are literally many hundreds of gray wires right next to one another on long terminal blocks. There are something like 10 terminal blocks running the height of the control panel (about 12 ft or so) with about 250 connections on each. It is the little stick-on label wrapped around the end of the wire that makes identification of each possible.

 

[canadian.gravelynut]

Thank you Extreme and ****** that is exactly what I was looking for and could not find.

Richard that is what I was going to do if I could not find them but I was hoping that some one would know about it and that way if some one else wanted to find this kind of wiring this post would help them to.

John

 

[ATLANTIC CENTRAL]

I am sorry, but if his regulator is bolted to the dash as shown in the IPL, then all that is needed is about 8 inches of wire since the red/white wire goes from the regulator to the ignition switch. If it were mine I would grab whatever color was handy and put it on.

If I had some wire that he wanted, I would drop it in an envelope and mail it to Ontario.

In contrast, almost of the wires on the control panel of a Electromotive locomotive are gray except for the few heavier gauge wires which are blue. There are literally many hundreds of gray wires right next to one another on long terminal blocks. There are something like 10 terminal blocks running the height of the control panel (about 12 ft or so) with about 250 connections on each. It is the little stick-on label wrapped around the end of the wire that makes identification of each possible.

My original training was in electrical design and control - back in the days of relays - we never used color codes, always wire numbers and terminal numbers, just like those locomotive controls.

Red was generally the color of choice for machine and motor starter control circuits, which then reserved black and white for their known use as the hot and neutral power supply.

While color coding may be practical in a mass production setting like making tractors, cars or appliances, it is too expensive, time intense and wasteful for field installed control wiring.

I wired relay cabinets the size of refrigerators with hundreds of relays and thousands of wires, generally all red except for the neutral wires.

I still follow those practices in any wiring I do today, black and white (AC) or red and and black (DC) for power wiring and ONE other color for all "control" wiring.

Sheldon

 

[Richard-tx]

In thinking about the locomotive wiring, almost all of the wires are gray - everywhere. All of the wiring harnesses are gray wire. with a few heavier blue wires. I don't recall seeing but 3 colors depending on the gauge wire. Gray, blue and dark gray. The only places that I can recall where there are colors like red, white, etc in on the gauges mounted in the control stand. GM bought the gauges. So what makes me such an expert? Many moons ago I worked at Electromotive in La Grange/McCook IL. I was a Locomotive Electrician. During my time there I worked assembling and wiring the main control panel, (a 4ft x 6ft panel) control stands, and then finally worked at locomotive test. Test was where all the wiring errors, defective parts, etc. were sorted out. I even worked on an all electric prototype locomotive for Europe. It was a high speed all electric unit that was very futuristic looking even in today's standards.

The only thing I regret was not getting exterior dimensional blueprints of the various locomotives that GM made over the years. It would have been a nice collection to hang on the wall. GM frowned on that activity. Many of the rules were still on the books from the WWII days when Nazi spies and sabotage was a very real concern.

There was one woman that worked there since WWII as a welder. She was a hoot to talk to.

 

[ATLANTIC CENTRAL]

Richard, what years did you work at LaGrange? Do you remember what locos they were building then? I know a fair amount about those locos as part of that "other" hobby.

And my modeling period of interest is the early 50's, the real hey day of LaGrange and EMD. I have lots of models of F units, GP7's, etc. And as modelers many of us get into the subtle details that changed as the locos evolved from version to version or from one railroad to another.

I worked in a lot of cool places in my years as an electrician, but never the locomotive factory - very cool.

I have many of those drawings, although not original EMD prints. The model press has published most of them over the years and I have a large collection of several publications, some all the way back to the 30's.

Sheldon

 

[Richard-tx]

I was there when the SD40, SD40-2, GP series, AMTRAC, and more were built. I would say about 1980. Some of the more memorable customers were Conrail, National Railway of Mexico, Amtrak, Chessie, and many more. We were cranking out 5 locos a day on the day shift and 6-7 during the night shift. GM had enough orders in the system to keep busy for 2 years. Sadly the backlog dwindled and then layoffs came.

There was one locomotive that we all signed. I think it was the one millionth locomotive or some such thing.