Wiring Harness & Cutting Gauge Holes

First....I am starting from ground zero with the wiring. Is it easiest to buy a new wiring harness from VS or make my own? Before you answer...I'm good at wrenching, but not great at electrical, so I would assume I know the answer to this one. Second....when cutting the holes for the gauges, do I drill starter holes and then use a jig saw or what? Also, I would assume there is a diagram, as to where the three holes go??? At the moment there are no holes at all.

There is some guidance in the CMC build manual in the FORUM Library on gauge positioning. I used a hole saw drill bit and then a sanding drum drill bit to get final size. The last VS harness I had still had the old ceramic fuses and then only 6 of them. I don't see much difference between the VW harness and the generic $50 VW dune buggy harnesses (ebay and JC Whitney). I'm using a Painless wiring circuit block (it has 10 or maybe 12 separate circuits) as heart for my wiring.

https://www.speedsterowners.com/library/cmcmanual2/images/cmc39.jpg

I just did that very thing.......

I had 6 holes in the dash already for the CMC supplies gauges but I filled these and went for 914 gauges instead.

After careful measuring, I cut the 2 smaller holes with a holesaw and the larger one with some chain drilling and careful sanding with a powerfile....

914 gauges are a little larger so I measured a hundred times and cut once :)

I fabricated a wiring harness based loosely on an original VW Sedan (with all new terminations) and then added a few wires here and there for extra stuff (third brake light, all new headlight wires, courtesy lights, that sort of thing). It took 2-3 weeks of nights to finish it, including pulling it all out when done to put shrink tube on it.

On my next kit, almost underway, I'll be using a pre-fab'd wiring harness. Anything is better than making one from scratch....

Use a VS harness..easy peasy

Front:
Lg white headlights
Blue High beams
Small white park lights
Yellow left signal
Brown right turn signal
Black light grounds
Red to master cylinder
Blue horn

Rear:
White running lights and Lic light
Yellow left
Brown right
Blue Ign coil
Orange neg coil
Lt green Oil Pressure
Dk green temp
Lg red to solenoid batt.

That's how easy a VS harness is, off the top of my balding head ~Alan

I just know most of you won't like this solution - but I celebrate the difference.

Vive la differance!

i did the same a GN. if i had to do it again - i would get one massive role of black wire and do this:

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=263825&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=grelland&start=220

it's a wicked build thread if you have the time to read it too.

The guy's got guts, doing everything in Black! Even if he DID label them.

Man, I sure do like those Bergman fan shrouds. They just look sooooo cool. I wish I could talk myself into one but all the research says NO.

Minor side track: ;
Used to work for a company that took stock rolls of electrical wiring and color imprinted the useage onto the individual wire every few feet over the entire length. Apparantly this is a requirement for aircraft wiring and we just made the marking equipment, not the final wiring harness.

Always thought it would be cool to have a car harness made like that. Rumors had it that there were a few hot rods roaming that area of the county with just such a wiring harness - it's good to have friends!