1965 Malibu Progress -Wiring

This week I spent a lot of time on the '65 Malibu convertible. When we last looked, the car had been rescued from several yeas of body shop purgatory and was looking pretty sad. I started last week by prepping and painting the later model 350, mating it to the TH350 transmission and installing it.

 I continued by wiring the entire car from scratch, installing the fuel tank and the rest of the fuel system, restoring the gauges, installing the radiator and a bunch of other little jobs that take way more time than they should. Wiring the car took a lot of work. I have used the EZ Wiring 21 circuit harness on several vehicles and I used it to wire up this car as well. Here's some details of how it's done, or at least how I do it. Check it out below.

I started by gutting every bit of original wiring out of the car. I kept several of the factory plugs to help integrate into the universal harness.

The EZ Wiring harness is laid out quite simply. There's a fuse panel and four bundles of wire, one each for the front section of the car, the rear section and two for underdash.

I started by mounting the fuse panel using 1/4-20 hardware.

Then I routed all the wireinig for the front section through the firewall. Here are the two main bundles, one to run to the core support for headlights and horn, etc. The other runs across the firewall for the starter, and all other engine mounted accessories.

Here's the three main bundles.

Next I ran the rear section. I used the factory routing under the door sill plate and into the trunk.

All the wires are labeled for easy routing. Here's the tail light section in place.

The underdash section always takes the most time. Here you can see how the factory ignition switch plug is neatly integrated into the harness.

This is the steering column section with wiring for signals, brake lights, horn, etc. The factory wiring is on the right and the harness is on the left. It has to be matched correctly for functions and then terminated in two universal plugs.

Here's the dash all wired and installed. Only the chrome plastic housing is new, the gauges are all original and restored.

I took the original  gauges out and cleaned everything. I also polished the lenses with rubbing compound to make them clear again, and polished the original switches to bring them back to life as well.