Tag! You’re it!

At Gunner’s Great Garage (www.gunnersgreatgarage.com) we’ve developed a few simple restoration techniques that we use over and over again. One of them is to tag wiring connections with belt buckle style electrical ties to help us put the wires back in the right places.

The wiring ties come in a variety of standard colors and “day glow” colors so that you can do quite a few connections without duplicating colors. Of course, the available colors aren’t endless, but there are two ways to go.

First, you can use all different colors in one area (say the alternator connections) and then you can use the same colors in abother area (say taillight connections) without getting totally confused.

Another option is to use different combinations of colors at certain electrical connections. For instance, you can put a red and light blue tie on both ends of a horn button connection. This uses a few more electrical ties, but it makes everything clearer for the person putting the car back together.

The same system can be used for other aspects of a restoration as well. For example, brake pipe connections can be tagged with colored electrical ties. Or if you need to identify which special bolt goes in a certain hole, the electrical ties can tag those parts too.

Follow this system and you’ll wind up with an easy-to-assemble color-coded restoration.