It’s Electric!!!

Boogie Woogie Woogie!

No, I wasn’t at a wedding or any number of Chicago “clubs” that still practice this wretched tradition.

Electric or unplugged, a line dance is a line dance.

Today I was finally ready to build the wiring harness or pig tails if you prefer for the front parking lights/turn signals and the side marker lights.

This is another instance of where I am making something for this car that wasn’t necessarily meant for it. While the ’74-’75 standard model were built like this, the ’75-up Royal Monacos were completely different.

And by completely different, I even mean the factory produced literature! But I’ll get back to that later.

My car was born with single light on each corner that acted as the side marker light, parking light, turn signal.

All three “lights” terminate to a single “Delphi/Packard 56” 3 prong terminal that connected to the female terminal that is located under the headlights.

SWF – ISO SWM with intent on making a spark!

Looking at the wiring diagrams from my ’74 and ’76 electrical service books left me confused in the beginning. These were the complete A to Z that showed every single standard and optional connection.

SO that didn’t help me at first.

I posted my question to the good folks over at https://bluesmobiles.proboards.com and fortunately an awesome member there, Spanks79, did a similar type job. With the exception that he put a ’76 Royal harness in his ’74 to address dodgy wiring.

Here is his write up that got me going – https://bluesmobiles.proboards.com/post/14980/thread

I am so glad I read that article about the wiring! While he didn’t go into the level of detail that I am going to go into here, it was just what I needed to get started. I was also very, very, very impressed with his whole write up on converting his car to a Bluesmobile. It is definitely worth the read!

Did you every wonder why so many classic cars have fire extinguishers in them? Mostly because of shoddy work or overloaded systems. While I am not against keeping one in the car since it could potentially save the car, especially in this case where the car is worth more sentimentally vs. cash value.

Modifying factory automotive wiring is usually one extreme or another. From nasty rats nests of spliced in wires not even taped to jobs that you can’t even tell someone was there.

While I strive for the “not even there” look, more important to me is making solid connections that are weather proof, that won’t overload the existing system.

With the knowledge I gained from the above forum post and reading the wiring diagrams what feels like a hundred times I got the courage to actually make the harnesses.

I got the light sockets from Amazon and O’Reilly, most of the butt connectors, shrink wraps, and male terminals came from eBay. I bought the wrong Delphi 56 connections, and while it is my intent to purchase them and redo the ends, for the intent on building and testing the harnesses I think we will be fine. Not like the car is seeing any water in the near future!

As I mentioned before, the wiring diagrams show all wiring options for all Chrysler/Dodge/Plymouth C-Bodies. Fury’s had it one way, Monaco’s another, and all of the Chrysler’s depending on model and options where yet another! ARRRRGGGH.

I am a big fan of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid. Not the band).

I went to the car, wrote down which wires went into which terminal and then I compared that to the connection diagrams from the factory and went from there.

Low and behold my connection matched Chrysler’s and not Dodge’s for that year!

I initially purchase 16 gauge wiring in black and white for this project. Looking through the wiring diagrams, everything called for 18 gauge when it came to the parking, side marker, and turn signals, so I purchase 18 gauge yellow just so I could get the right correct gauge.

Even then I was still thinking of going with the 16 gauge to handle the additional/separation of connections. So you will see some pictures with black/white wires, and some with yellow. I changed my mind before getting to far ahead of myself and made everything 18 gauge.

Long before I started this work I know which wires did what by using a simple 9 volt battery. Ground to the Neg. terminal, Live to the positive and you will see light. The parking lights are dimmer than the turn signal. So by identifying which wire made the brighter light was the turn signal! Pretty neat huh? I don’t have pictures of my initial tests but I did one for posterity.

The shit I should have learned in grade school science.

Now knowing what wires did what, it was a matter of lengthening the wires adding the terminals and Wa-Lah (Voilà for idiots)!

Not quite, but close. I did lengthen the wires using butt connectors crimped down over the join and used heat shrink tubing over that to keep the elements out.

Butt joint crimped and heat shrink over the connection.

I also had to join the two ground wires and two parking light wires from the sockets into one connection that would then terminate with a male connector. Same process, join, crimp, heat shrink.

Mind you, with each crimp I did, I pulled each end of the wire to test it’s strength. If anything was loose, I crimped down harder or redid it. I also tested the connections with the 9 volt batter to insure each one worked as it was supposed to before I applied the heat shrink tubing.

After all of that was done, I had harnesses that were strong, weather resistant, and worked (in theory at this point).

But it didn’t look remotely factory. SO I grabbed the electrical tape and went the extra mile and wrapped the wires. I actually think I went a little overboard as it looks much nicer than what the factory did in the ’70’s (But I am biased on this subject of course).

I ran the lights to their intended spaces, connected them into their proper housings and using my updated handy dandy wiring diagram I proceeded to connect them into the terminals.

Now, up to this point the car battery was obviously disconnected. I may be a fool, but I ain’t now dummy! Plugging metal connections to a live source tend to make lots of sparks and smoke! No good.

After I was done connecting everything I said a prayer to St. Eligius (Patron Saint of Electricans) and connected the positive terminal back up.

No sparks, no smoke, nothing. So far so good!

Then I start the car. Again, no sparks, no smoke, no nothing. I am liking this so far. I am so nervous that I get out of the car and do a walk around just to make sure I don’t smell anything burning!

Went back and pulled the headlamp switch to the parking light setting and…

(Queue GOD’s Music)

At this point I audibly giggled like a little school girl.

Side marker lights worked! Turn signals worked! I couldn’t help but feeling an extreme sense of happiness!

This completes the transformation from a ’76 Royal to a ’74 “looking” Monaco. Without the side marker lights and lower grill lights it just doesn’t look like a Bluesmobile IMHO.