Electrical; Painless/Ron Francis/ ISIS

I will be re-wiring a '70 Cuda that is being built more into a Pro-Touring car. Propably F.I., HID, power windows, locks and a few other upgrades. I need a complete wiring harness as currently there is nothing in the car and I am exploring options out there as far as completeness, ease of instillation etc. The modular ISIS system looks pretty awesome but makes me a bit nervous if I am 300 miles from nowhere and a module fails (or are they pretty bullit proof?). Does anyone have any recomendations?

from what i hear is painless is no where near painless.


isis seems really cool, especially with the extras you want. but man its expensive. haven't heard anything good or bad about them yet.

have heard quite a few good things about american auto wire. maybe check them out too.

there is a guy on fabo that had had quite a bit of trouble with a ron francis kit. he didn't have anything nice to say about the customer service either. but who knows what the full story is with that.

Replacing the factory Mopar harness isn't a cheap route either! I think you can get 1K spent pretty fast and your still using old technology, firewall connectors... Ihe ISIS seems really cool but it doean't come with any plugs/sockets so you still have to purchase those seperate. The nice thing about it though is that there are so few wires running fore and aft and the voltage to all the dash components/switches are just miliamps, virtually no chance for a meltdown.

Depends on what you want... I choose the re-pop approach with a Y1 replacement harness. I have mostly stock parts in the pass compartment and I value the ability to use the FSM. I did bypass the alternator wiring and provide a direct feed from the alt to the fender relay and battery. Also had the factory ammeter converted to a voltmeter.

This approach was fairly quick and effective for me. And yes, its easy to spend $1k.

Ron Francis has a great harness. Very flexible and complete. It allows use of their firewall blank (cleans things up). Wires are all marked. Don't think you can go wrong. Of course most or all connectors will be non-factory. Good folks to chat with - helpful.

Thanks for your input!

I had a Ron Francis kit for my RR. It would be fine if you weren't using factory gauges. All switch connections are chevy style. I got in over my head with it trying to match up all the factory connections. I wound up putting all of the stock wiring back and have a running car now. I never dealt with the customer service either. I would buy their kit (or use the one in my attic) again if I was planning on a street rod/ race car style wiring job.