I really don't like the look of all my old electrical wires in the engine bay and I was looking for something to make them look a little better. I was thinking I could use that stuff that you slide onto the wire and then use a heat gun to shrink it to form around the wires. Would this work? Is it at all harmful to the wires? Has anyone else done this?

 

use wire loom... they sell it at car audio or electronic store.

 

Hmmm...I was kind of looking for more of an answer to my question. But um...thanks I think.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by bigslimdog &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Would this work? Is it at all harmful to the wires? Has anyone else done this?</TD></TR></TABLE>

Are you think of taking some shrink that is larger and shrinking it around like a whole connectors worth of wires or each individual wire. No it won't hurt anything, but I think it will look like ***. I'd just remove the old dingy cracked up loom and replace it with some new. I only use heat shrink for covering connections, not as a vanity piece. Just my 2 cents.

 

It would only be covering wires, not connectors

 

That stuff rocks. Never tried it, but it definitely looks good. I normally just wrap the wires with electrical tape.

 

I've used the shrink wrap before on some wiring and let me tell you a few things about it. For starters it comes in a sleeve type thing, so you have to slide it over the end of the wire (or connector in this case), which could prove to be difficult. Other than that, it can only shrink so much, so I'm not even sure you could use a correct size to get over the connector and still be able to shrink it all the way down on the wires.

 

yeah thats what i've got going on right now all over the engine bay. i just want to clean up all the wires with some of this stuff on each wire. i'm not trying to win any shows or anything. just want to clean up the engine a little bit

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Ricey McRicerton &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I've used the shrink wrap before on some wiring and let me tell you a few things about it. For starters it comes in a sleeve type thing, so you have to slide it over the end of the wire (or connector in this case), which could prove to be difficult. Other than that, it can only shrink so much, so I'm not even sure you could use a correct size to get over the connector and still be able to shrink it all the way down on the wires. </TD></TR></TABLE>

I ordered some 3:1 wire stuff in 1/2in. and 3/8in. diameters. So it should be shrinking to 3 times smaller. I dunno if that will be small enough. The site I ordered it from also had some 4:1 but I figured 3:1 would be fine. What do you think?

 

bump for some more opinions

 

bump

 

if you are gonna use heat shrink,..shrink it with a heat gun,...but for all the wires in your bay,..you would have to cut the wires right before the connector,..slide the heat shrink over the wires and then resolder the wires to the connectors,..could prove time consuming and tedious,..plus some wires have to twist and bend and do all these other things,..if they are wrapped,..the heat shrink when bent and stuff looks like ***,..i say just do wire loom,..there is also the option of hiding all your wires and stuff,..to me this is the cleanest way,..ive seen engine bays where you only see a couple wires and it always looks SO SO clean

 

It's great for sealing connections but doesn't look good. I use it at work all the time (a little bigger though) and i use it on my car to water seal electrical connections.
If your planning to put a bunch of wires into it then seal it I don't recommend it. Also your not going to be able to shrink it very much it will shrink up but it gets to a point where all your doing is burning it. I use 1.7'' and 1.5'' at work. The 1.5'' slides over the connector nice and snug and shrinks up perfect. The 1.7'' slides loosely but you have to really burn it to get a good seal.

Shrink for water seal
Shrink for aesthetics

 

Use shrink wrap when you've cut a wire and need to cover the exposed electrical connection. I would also use shrink wrap to bundle 2 or 3 wires, assuming it was all coming from the same sensor, but I would not use it to just bundle wires for a whole bunch of sensors....you use loom for that.

So is that what you're doing; Cutting connections and soldering/shrink wrapping them back up?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by EE_Chris &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">So is that what you're doing; Cutting connections and soldering/shrink wrapping them back up?</TD></TR></TABLE>

Thats what i thought, but it sounds like he wants to wrap several wires leading to different locations together.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by 2lua &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">use wire loom... they sell it at car audio or electronic store.</TD></TR></TABLE>

agreed loom is easier to use and looks nicer, heat shrink would be a bitch unless the harness was out... and still not get that clean of a look.
Loom goes around the heat shrink to group wires?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by b16ahybrid &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

Thats what i thought, but it sounds like he wants to wrap several wires leading to different locations together. </TD></TR></TABLE>

No it wouldn't be from several locations going to one. Just for individual wires. I'm thinking i'll go with the loom though. But how do you hide the wires? Any threads on this?

 

try searching clean engine bays or something, I've definatly seen posts in here on that... but they were quite some time ago...

 

DON'T USE OVERSIZED SHRINKWRAP. BEND A PAPER CLIP AN PUSH IT ALL THE WAY IN THE HOLES. THE TERMINALS WILL UNLOCK AND PULL RIGHT OUT.