The joys of working on a car behind someone else

wspohn said:

Sure beats the car I was restoring where the previous owner had thrown away the stock wiring harness and replaced it with new wire.  Would have been much more useful had he not apparently found a deal on bulk red wire so that every wire on the car was ...red. 

Every wire in an ERJ145, with the exception of coaxial and shielded wires, is white and there's thousands of them. Installers just need the discipline to label the ends. I will concede that color coding does make things a lot easier.

I can't stand sloppy wiring jobs.

Nothing like a nicely wired panel.  Fortunately, the contractor I'm working with on projects right now is pretty good:

(taken during construction as part of a series of progress photos back in 2016)

My goal is to rewire my house and end up with the panel looking almost that neat.

i suppose these are permanent applications but the inner computer deployment tech in me hates seeing wires zip tied instead of Velcro strapped

In reply to Ian F :

I need to post a pic of the panel(s) in my house tonight for contrast. Looks like hell. 

In reply to Furious_E :

So does mine.  Most home panels do after who knows how long a panel has had stuff changed in it by "electricians" of questionable ability and usually no time to do the work neatly.

In this case, the owner is willing to pay for work to be done to this level. The whole facility is immaculate. You could practically eat off of the mechanical room floors.

Everytime I work behind someone else it usually involves stripped bolts, overtorqued bolts and the occasional loose or missing one

As someone who has to troubleshoot a lot of wiring in systems much like that, I despise zip ties. Yes they look nice, but chasing a wiring problem through that would be a nightmare. 

I recently spent 3 hours chasing a wiring problem through a German built revolving door that was wired much like that. It required pulling most of the panels out of the canopy because the wire couldn't move in the bundle. 

I guess I can give them a bit of a pass due to the vibration that system deals with but I would rather see something like Panduit used and keep the zip ties to the minimum. 

Apparently not many of you have seen aviation wire bundles tied with wax coated string. When working with those you cut the strings and replace with tie straps. And all the wires are white with a number stamped on each end.

Ian F said:

Nothing like a nicely wired panel.  Fortunately, the contractor I'm working with on projects right now is pretty good:

(taken during construction as part of a series of progress photos back in 2016)

 

My goal is to rewire my house and end up with the panel looking almost that neat.

That looks great, but my home breaker panel has the neutral strips down either side so the neutrals/grounds are behind the hot wires rather than at the top of the panel in your example.

The zip ties look great, but yeah, that would get annoying VERY quickly!  

But I'll take that over the terrible work I usually have to figure out. 

In reply to DrBoost :

I owned a 57 Chevy Handyman for a couple of years. It had wire nuts under the dash and hood. I definitely agree with your point. If that came with a set of as built drawings, it would be a dream to work on compared to a lot of the wiring I deal with. Much of our stuff the wiring is wadded up and crammed in the box. Those I troubleshoot by cutting the rats nest out and rewiring from scratch. It's faster and less likely to generate a recall.

This looks like the kind of work you see in high end boats.

Well I certainly never laid a hand on that...

Good to see a positive thread for once instead of a "look at what the dumbass before me did".

The0retical said:

wspohn said:

Sure beats the car I was restoring where the previous owner had thrown away the stock wiring harness and replaced it with new wire.  Would have been much more useful had he not apparently found a deal on bulk red wire so that every wire on the car was ...red. 

Every wire in an ERJ145, with the exception of coaxial and shielded wires, is white and there's thousands of them. Installers just need the discipline to label the ends. I will concede that color coding does make things a lot easier.

I can't stand sloppy wiring jobs.

You guys are giving me flashbacks top some fire and security panels I had to replace. Nothing like a 12 zone 80 device system made entirely of one color of wire with no labels.