I'm thinking of adding a bulkhead connector to a project car, to make pulling the engine easier, and so I can add a circuit or two on occasion, without drilling another hole in the firewall. Painless makes one for a little under $40, but is limited to 16-20 ga wire, and I'm not sure if I need to buy a special crimper. I'd kind of like to be able to run down to 14 or 12 ga, in case I want to power something inside the car that needs a decent amount of juice. Does anyone know where I could buy a kit that comes with the connector, terminals, and any tools I might need beyond a normal set of crimpers?
EvanB
MegaDork
5/27/21 10:25 a.m.
I did a little more digging and found this one on diyautotune that can go from 12-20, but their recommended crimping tool is over $100. Might give the Deutsch ones a shot. At least I've got a bit of time to figure this out.
NOHOME
MegaDork
5/27/21 2:44 p.m.
Have you looked into the Delphi Weatherpack stuff?
Stay away from the weatherpack china knockoffs. Been there tried that and they are junk.
To do it "quality" is about $500 in tooling and connectors. (racespeconline.com)
On the cheap the 22pin Weatherpack at DIYAutotune.com and the Keep-it-clean solder cup ones are the better options.
FWIT
Weatherpac has a very low tolerance for being connected and disconnected more than about 4 times. +/-
Bite the bullet and as recommended go with the Deutsch
Good luck
Went ahead and ordered the Deutsch connector and a crimping tool. Way more connections that I'll need initially, but the expandability will be nice.
iansane
HalfDork
7/13/21 12:14 p.m.
Are there big count round bulkhead style connectors meant for "larger" gauge wires? I see Deutsch has their AS line that goes up to 66pins but in really, really small gauge. I would like one bulkhead for an LS swap (so a few are 16-18ga not just 20-22ga).
I grabbed that HDP20 which is great but I'm way over 47 pins in this harness and I'm having trouble finding a second location close by if I were to run two connectors...
In reply to iansane :
Just curious, are you putting the ECU inside the car? I am still planning on running it under the hood, so I won't have a ton of wires going through the bulkhead, mostly a few signal wires for gauges, and maybe a few related to low powered accessories or relay triggers.
Yeah, I want to mount the ecu under the dash. It's an already small engine bay and a big gen3 LS pcm is crazy obtrusive.
Would it make sense to just use a split grommet or two for that job, so you don't have to cut up the entire harness? If you need to pull the engine harness, it could be fairly easy to just disconnect the ECU and remove the grommet to get the harness out.
Well I have to chop about 2 feet out of the harness already so I was looking to add the bulkhead at the same time so that any other time I have to pull the engine I don't need to disconnect the whole harness. If push comes to shove then yeah, I'll just end up feeding the harness/pcm connectors through the hole.
In reply to iansane :
If you are already shortening the harness, then yeah, I agree it makes sense to just go ahead with the bulkhead connector. I did a quick google search before, and it looks like some people are using milspec connectors. I kind of wonder if there is a market to build one that would plug directly into the stock style harness connectors.
I would keep larger gauge stuff out of the harness breakout that has the small stuff in it that runs to the ECU (outside of ECU positive power maybe) for noise and cleanliness of install anyway. Sometimes the MIL-DTL-5015 series of connectors has better options for this than the D38999 series if you want a few larger gauge contacts without going to some large diameter connector. The two families are largely incompatible with each other from a hardware standpoint.
