The wiring of my bus is a complete spaghetti mess behind the dash, and the fusebox is old and very knackered looking. We are having some issues with intermittent electrical gremlins and I am considering taking out the interior and getting the whole bus re-wired. At least I am until I find out its going to cost a fortune etc. Do any of you guys know how long it would take a pro to re-wire a bus, how much it's likely to cost and of anyone who is good in the East Midlands? I think I will bring my soldering iron to techenders just in case!
I know someone who got a prototype bay loom changed over to a late bay loom for a round 300 pounds I think they were in atherstone midlands area . But price could have changed by now may be best to call an auto sparky out to your house for a quote to do it there
Try Jon at http://www.vwlooms.com/ based in Lincolnshire. He makes and sells looms to order. Changing a loom is not too hard providing you are methodical and take your time to read/understand the relevant wiring diagram. Of course if you have to pay a sparky his time wont be cheap. If you don't feel able to change it yourself you could still save time and money by removing the old loom and replacing it but letting an electrician connect up. The good thing about a reloom is it gets rid of all the previous owners modifications so at least you are entering a known arena as it were.
As previously said, as long as the new loom has the same colour wires as the original one it's just a case of following the wiring diagrams. It is made 100x easier if your bus is empty and has no headlining etc as you will need to feed wires up to the interior lights etc. One massive tip is to attach a strong piece of string to the old loom when you pull it out so that you can attach the new loom to the string and just pull it back through peeling off the appropriate cables as you go. Saves you trying to create some kind of hook like mechanism to pull it down the correct tubes etc...
normally takes me 2 to 3 days to make the looms from scratch install them and check that everything is working ok
Thanks guys. That gives me a fair idea. I'll pm Matty also as I think I'm am going to do it at some point. I just don't want to sod up the summers camping. We lost a fair bit of time last year to a knackered engine.
It's not a 'change a bulb' easy job but it's certainly not an 'engine rebuild' one either. It pays to be totally organised and do it all systematically. Label and mark as you remove, attach string to the old loom where possible to help you pull through the new loom and then reconnect slowly and carefully. The real trick is getting a well made loom that fits.
If the loom is a direct copy of an original from your bus it really isn't that difficult except as mentioned about behind the dashboard.
Yes indeed. Photos are essential and with so many phones having cameras there really is no excuse but also the wiring diagrams in the Bentley and Haynes are good. VW did good wiring diagrams. Not so good now as the one for my mk3 Golf makes no sense at all.
