isleblue65 wrote:
Hello, I replaced all of the wiring in my '65 Cooper with an Autosparks cloth wrap (black with blue interwoven) proper color coded UK Mini harness.
The wiring that came with the car from Australia was mostly a clump of all black wires with a few orange ones and a red one or two thrown in. What surprised me was that most of the wire bundles were neatly wrapped in PVC or electrical tape for the length of the harness, and I think I had read somewhere that some Australian Minis had PVC taped looms from the factory? I had a hard time understanding why someone would have redone the wiring with all black wires at some point and taken the care to wrap it all neatly, but not bothered to properly color code the wires to the diagram.
I've not found much information about wiring harnesses used in Zetland manufactured Minis. Were these the same as the harnesses going in UK cars at the time, or were they different harnesses manufactured in Australia? What I pulled out wasn't a factory harness, was it?
The wiring that came with the car from Australia was mostly a clump of all black wires with a few orange ones and a red one or two thrown in. What surprised me was that most of the wire bundles were neatly wrapped in PVC or electrical tape for the length of the harness, and I think I had read somewhere that some Australian Minis had PVC taped looms from the factory? I had a hard time understanding why someone would have redone the wiring with all black wires at some point and taken the care to wrap it all neatly, but not bothered to properly color code the wires to the diagram.
I've not found much information about wiring harnesses used in Zetland manufactured Minis. Were these the same as the harnesses going in UK cars at the time, or were they different harnesses manufactured in Australia? What I pulled out wasn't a factory harness, was it?
That would be close to correct for your Cooper. Early Aussie minis had the black cloth bound harness from the UK with the colour flecks interwoven ,as evidenced by quite a few early examples I have seen with Lucas England on them .Probably about a third of the wires in these early harness's had the braided type covering,with the remainder being the PVC covered type ,as in later harness's. The black taped Aussie harness came later ,it would seem the changeover occured around 1966 - 1967,although its very hard to determine exactly which year as I have seen original one owner 1967 minis with the cloth bound harness and yet my 1966 mini has its original Aussie made black taped harness. The later mini K and Mk2 Cooper S had only a partially taped harness ,with the wires visible in quite a few places,usually held together with white cloth tape
The 2 of them even with freight from the UK cost less than the price of one here in Oz