Painless Performance Wiring Harness Install - Project Get Shorty Wired Science - Tech

When I was 16 years old I set out to build the ultimate stereo for my ride, within my budget that is, which was inauspiciously diminutive. (This is my way of dancing around "unfortunately small!") The only thing I knew about wiring was hot wires and ground wires, and ya need a switch to turn things on. With more gall than brains I gathered all the components: receiver, subwoofer, amps, wires, and the like. Eventually I got it hooked up. From there I decided the inside of my ride needed to light up like a late-night Amsterdam discotheque. By tapping into circuits such as the dome light, power seats, and cigarette lighter I wired in strobe and black lights. It was my crowning achievement in wiring-when it worked that is. Most of the time I overloaded circuits, blew fuses, and melted wires together, but nonetheless I did it! Long story short, wiring is something anyone can accomplish so long as you set out to do it.

The prelude before was the leeway into the next bit in the Project Get Shorty series: wiring. The time has come to provide fire to all those components wasting away in hibernation. Unfortunately, the mere thought of wiring one's truck evokes images of Clark Griswold's Christmas lights to many. Now granted, things are intimidating when you're staring down 100 loose wires! But the truth is, if ya take things on a wire-to-wire basis it's a pretty simple procedure. After all, each item needs battery feed, ground, and a switch to interrupt the circuit. It's that cut-and-dry.

When it comes to wiring, Painless Performance is no stranger in the hot rod world. Painless is in the business of providing all the wiring essentials needed to get your truck on the road. In the world of classic trucks they manufacture stock replacement harnesses-with all the correct plugs predetermined-for just about every application out there. For those with custom needs they also manufacture universal truck kits that can satisfy the most basic wiring needs, or 18-circuit systems that will wire everything including the kitchen fridge! For Get Shorty we went with an 18-circuit '67-72 GM Truck Chassis Wiring Harness. This factory replacement harness will run every component thrown into Get Shorty, and more to be truthful, but what really sold us is the wire lengths are pre-cut and everything has a correct plug-and-play fitting to make the install a breeze. However, not all of Get Shorty's equipment is OEM. Therefore we had to dissect the wiring harness at times, but this too is a cinch when using a Painless kit, as you'll see. The harness covers every need of a fully loaded C10, plus it's outfitted to accommodate new technologies such as power antennas, electric fuel pumps, cruise control, and the like. Basically, this harness is the perfect way to solve all your needs. On top of that, making things even simpler is that every wire is labeled and is bundled into separate sub-harnesses within the harness to make routing and configuring a no-brainer.