Do yourself a favor and plan out your installation before you open the wiring kit box. Some things that you should consider before you start are:

• Where will you mount the fuse panel, how will you run the wires so they are neat, organized, maintainable, and away from heat and sharp objects.
• What is different with your vehicle than what is considered "universal". Chances are you will be faced with some obsticles and you will need to work around some things. We will address what we found during the installation of the American Autowire Highway 22 universal wiring kit, and what we did to make it right!
• What will you be upgrading during this installation. Some things to consider to make your installation more up-to-date, and straightforward would be:
  • Aftermarket gauges - this is the perfect time to upgrade your gauges. This will save you a lot of time, but not something that has to be done. If you stick with your original gauges, you will need a wiring diagram for you specific vehicle and I would suggest wiring one wire at a time. Pay attention and if there is a voltage drop, make sure you wire it to the same devices as original.
  • Internally regulated alternator - not only will you gain with higher amperage, you will be able to clean-up that engine compartment by removing the old regulator and wiring. You can choose a 1-wire alternator or an internally regulated alternator that uses an exciter wire from your ignition. As with the gauges, you do not have to do this, but you will need to wire your charging circuit separately.

You will find that Ford did some things differently Chevy. During the installation of the universal wiring kit on Tom's 1966 Mustang, we found the following obsticals:

• Horn wiring - Chevy uses a ground that is picked up from the column to fire a relay that in turn sends 12v to the horns through the horn relay. The American Autowire Highway 22 universal wiring kit has a horn relay on the fuse box that is fired when you pass a ground to the black wire labeled "horn ground". Ford actually uses 2 contacts on the horn ring. One contact carries a 12v feed and the second contact passes 12v to the horn when the horn button is pressed. We will explain how we got around this and how we made the column plug so that if Tom decides later to upgrade to a aftermarket column he can simply plug it and everything will work.
• Ignition Switch - The original ignition switch is not rated to carry the load and will need to be replaced. At the time we did this installation, we couldn't find a Ford switch that we could use so we made the switch included with the kit work.
• Interior lighting - Chevy uses a ground to turn the interior lights on when you open the doors. Ford, on the other hand passes 12v through the door switches. You would think that all you would have to do is to send a ground instead of the 12v, but it is not that simple. If you have existing dome or sail panel light fixtures, you may have to replace or modify them.
• Parking lights / stop and turn signals - Everyone knows that we like to replace the ALL of the wire and connectors during a vehicle rewire. We could not rebuild the sockets on these lights as we do not have access to the proper connectors that were needed. Everything was throughly cleaned, painted and fresh wire installed with new plugs.

Everything else was straight forward and came together quite well. Follow along with us and we will show you how we tackled the differences between Ford and Chevy.

We mounted the fuse panel on the firewall just above the heater. This is a good spot because you can't see the fuse panel while seated in the car, but it is easy to get to if you need to.

This is the panel is mounted under the dash in Tom's 1966 Mustang

We mentioned earlier that the Ford column passes 12v up the column and 12v to the horn when you press the horn. The Ford column uses 2 contacts to do this, whereas Chevy uses only 1 as it passes a ground to the horn relay. This is a drawing of the GM plug that comes with the kit. You will have to wire your column plug to match the function of the coresponding wire.

The thing to remember when wiring your plug is that the plug is lettered and it will plug into a female plug that has the same letters. The wires must match up. The following diagram shows how to match up the colors from your column to the colors on the plug from the kit.