So over the last two or three years I’ve been wiring and re-wiring the El Camino myself. After all I thought I worked on various Air Force planes as an electrician for eight-years I can wire a ’67 El Camino. Wrong electron boy!
Over the past few years I’ve labored to repair and rewire the headlights and their sockets, repair the brake lights, and try to fix the brake light receptacles, find grounds, make the dash lights and heater controls work. I had hundreds of man- hours, rolls of wire, splices, wire ends, and electrical tape and still every time I tried the turn signal the low oil pressure light blinked. Finally I admitted defeat and decided to buy and install a custom wiring loom.
After calling around and talking to some other tortured souls who had tried to re-wire a disaster like the Elk I settled on getting a kit from the folks at Painless.
I called told them and they sent me their all purpose kit for a ’67 El Camino.
As soon as it came I opened it up, took inventory, once again looked at the wiring mess in my 40 year old El Camino and knew instantly that I would sooner stick one of my digits in a blender than attempt to remove and replace the 40 year-old wiring harness. So I drove the Elk around for a couple of months –oh alright six months— and lived with the fact that I never knew what lights or systems would work when I stepped on the brake pedal, signaled for a turn, or just started the engine. I spent much of that six-months with the Elk in the driveway on Saturdays cobbling together the wiring so that I could drive that day.
Finally I swallowed my pride and went to my mechanic Abraham “Abe” Simpson ( No not Bart Simpsons granddad!) Abe's shop, Pro Auto, is located behind the DRO Phlegm Building offices. Abe has his own hot rods including a ’67 Nova with a 383 mouse motor and a bitchin’ custom ’68 Buick Rivera. He allows the mag to do installs and helps on our projects. So one day I drove the Elk around the corner to his shop and asked him to install the wiring harness and I told him that it would be a paying job. He instantly got a grin on his face and gleam in his eye. Finally after all of the Pro Bono work he’d done, a DRO gig that actually paid.
He estimated that it would take him about three days to remove and replace the wiring harness. In actuality it took him about a week working on the Elk between other jobs which I had told him to do. The results were wonderful. Suddenly I had dash lights and tail lights that worked right every time. The gas gage worked, ditto the wipers and the heater. I could actually drive the car without fear of being rear-ended by a little old lady in a Buick 225 who didn’t see the brake lights. Abe gave the wiring harness high marks for being absolutely bolt on. He said that he had to make a few wires and lengthen or shorten others but overall the kit was 99.9 percent right on.
Now I have a modern wiring harness in the ’67 and I couldn’t be happier. No more buss fuses wrapped in a chewing gum wrapper, no more ‘smoke test troubleshooting’ no more holding a flashlight in my mouth at night so I could read the gages and the speedometer. . Now finally the Burkster and the El Camino Nitrouso are both wired when being driven. And I finally really understand what is meant by that old saying no Pain(less) No Gain!