Light Electrical Wire connectors and ends

[Richard Gordon]

Greetings, I am new to the Porsche 356 world and recently purchased a car on BAT from Skirmants. There are quit a few items that I am replacing, but today I have a question regarding What the original wiring might have been like for the front corner lights and the rear tail lights. Where there spade connectors in the wiring? or has someone added these in? For the front corner lights, is it possible to remove the original wire ends and reuse them? Or do I need to cut them and reattach to the new fixtures? Are there proper color coded pieces of wire that can be purchased? Or just use any wire to make the connection and solder them and use shrink tubes? I would prefer getting a piece of proper color coded wire and finding original ends to use in the fixtures. Any comments and suggestions welcome.

Part two, I am replacing the horn grilles and the new ones come with little rubber gasket for the flat connecting tabs. What do these go between?

Again, thanks in advance.
Richard

[David Jones]

Welcome to the club forum.
Most all the connectors on the 356 were originally bullet connectors soldered on to the wire. The same size connectors were used on all size wire where bullet connectors were used. Here is a link to the Stoddard catalog item bullet connectors male and female. http://www.stoddard.com/nla-564-636-50.html
You can either go to someone like Adam Wright at Unobtanium and sees if he has a front wiring harness from which you can scavenge the right color coded wire or perhaps YNZ and see if they have the correct wire.http://www.ynzyesterdaysparts.com

[Mike Wilson]

Congrats on purchasing a reat car. I followed the auction on BaT.

For electrical connectors and wire, I suggest YnZ Yesterday's. They are one of our trusted vendors and contact info can be found on this website under 'Resources...vendors".

Question #2: if you are referring to the upper horn grills (rather than the longer ones under the bumper) the rubber spacers go between the grill and the body of the car using the longer bolt. The grills use one long bolt with the rubber spacer and one short bolt. The spacer goes under the inboard tab.

Mike

[Hugo Karasawa]

There are some vendors for color coded wire with tracer.
http://www.riwire.com/
https://4rcustomswire.com/
Many of the wire connectors are bullet connectors.
You can read a lot of the 356 wiring in the Registry's magazine, Greg Bryan wrote these articles, these start in the may/june 2014 magazine. In the march/april 2017 you can see the complete harnesses and what type of connectors were used in the 356Cs.
You can read these magazines, use the Magazine tab in the registry's home page.

[Jim Neil]

One of the most useful books I acquired after buying my 356 10 years ago was Joe Leoni's electrical book. Lots of stuff I am not capable of working on, but electrics I can handle. Highly recommended! http://blocks-books.com/BLOCKS-BOOKS/356Electrics.html

[Hugo Karasawa]

An example of what you can read in the magazine, this from the march/april 2017 magazine.

[Mike Wilson]

Richard: as Neil suggested, getting Joe Leoni's book is a must for a 356 owner. There are also several articles that you can find either by searching previous threads or Googling the topic. Greg Bryan has been very generous sharing info on electrical diagrams, etc.

There are other books you should acquire as well to familiarize yourself with the 356. I believe a list of them was posted on previous threads.

Finally, amend your profile so we can see where you live. Undoubtedly there are fellow 356 owners in your area that can be of help to you and you can hook up with.

Mike

[Jim Alton]

You might want to check the Registry article Soldering Bullet Connectors <https://porsche356registry.org/article/168>

A good solder joint depends upon getting all the surfaces hot enough to melt and bond with the solder. I've tried to push the side of the bullet onto the wire with my soldering iron. Then you need to introduce rosin-core solder through the little hole in the tip of the bullet connector.

It's easy if you have a third arm growing out of your forehead...

Lucky me, I've always had to do this lying on my back looking up at the wires.