AS-J
Vehicle wiring doubles in complexity every ten years. The Escort is at least 20 years old.
So any new car has wiring which is 4 times more complicated than yours should be.
General points / modifying wiring / dismantling a loom / Renovating and installing a loom / Escort DIN colour codes / battery / headlights / repeater indicators / wipers / steering column stalks / hazard lights / fan / dashboard wiring / fuse box / starter and solenoid / connectors / tools / Haynes manuals / grommets / SVA points
General Points
If you are using the wiring loom from an existing car you should be able
to simply plug in the components and switch on, and this is obviously
the simplest way to go about things. Why make life complicated?
Modifying wiring
Why do it? The main reasons would be a) because the loom you have does
not fit your chassis, or b) you want to fit components which were not
provided for in the loom you are using or remove the wires for components
you don't need.
Dismantling
When you take the loom out of your donor car it is really essential to
label all the connections as you go. You can do this with bits of white
insulating tape and a permanent pen. Of course, you can always look up
wires in the circuit diagram of your Haynes manual but you will probably
go cross-eyed and may well find that there are differences between what
you are working on and what is in the diagram.
Renovating and installing a loom. I took
all the wrapping off my loom. I would recommend this - the old wrapping
will be dirty, it could hide all sorts of badly-done repairs and breaks.
If you do take it off, leave on the tapes you will find underneath at
junction points - otherwise the whole thing will collapse into a tangle.
Put on extra bands of insulation tape if necessary. You should find once
the loom is bare that you can see what goes where and how the system fits
together, which makes life so much easier. Once you start putting the
loom into the car, do it without re-wrapping it so that you can adjust
exit points of wires from the loom, put in extra wires (e.g. rear fog
lights) and remove ones you don't need (rear window heater, courtesy lights).
Tape the exit points where wires come out of the loom. Get all the connections
sorted. Then with everything connected, test the whole lot. Then you can
re-wrap the loom, using non-adhesive PVC tape. - you don't need to take
it out of the car to do this. Above all, don't forget this: put
the grommets onto the relevant parts of the loom before you put all the
connectors on and before you wrap it.
There are colour codes for vehicle wires. In fact there are several sets of codes - older British cars have one set, older continental cars like the Escort have another (DIN standard), and this seems to have changed in more recent cars. The main colours in the Mk1 and 2 Escorts are (with the usual disclaimer)
| Colour | Main uses | Examples |
| Red | direct supply from the battery, always on. |
Starter cable from battery |
| Black | switched supply (and negative battery lead) | From Ignition switch position 2 to components
which are only on when ignition is on. The supply wire for the reversing lights is black. |
| Black / yellow | ignition circuit | supply to coil, tachometer, instrument voltage regulator |
| Black / red | ignition switch start position | to starter solenoid (also brake lights) |
| Black / green | offside indicator | |
| Black / white | nearside indicator | |
| Black / green / white | supply to indicators | |
| Black / blue | supply to washer pump | (can also be supply from ignition switch to solenoid) |
| Brown | all earth wires (to chassis) | |
| Brown / yellow, Brown / green, Brown / white |
switched earth (I think) | circuits where the switch is on the earth side of the circuit rather than on the supply side - parts of the heater circuit, the brake warning light circuit and bits of the wiper delay. |
| Grey | sidelight / panel light supply | |
| Grey / yellow | panel lights | |
| Grey / white | nearside side lights | |
| Grey / red | offside side lights | |
| White | headlight main beam | |
| Yellow | headlight dipped beam | |
| Blue / black | fuel tank to fuel gauge | |
| Red / white | temp. sender to temp. gauge | |
| Blue / green | oil sender to oil warning light | |
| Green | wiper supply | slow speed |
| Red | wiper supply | high speed |
| Pink / white | ballast resistor wire to coil | (? - might be the unballasted start voltage wire to the coil) |
You may have a serviceable battery. If not you can buy one for about £40, or you can get an nearly new one from a scrapyard for maybe £10. If you do the latter, take a voltmeter with you and test the battery. Allowing for most scrap cars not having run for a while, the battery should show about 12.5 volts. If you aren't familiar with car batteries, read Ron's warnings in the Book.
I found the Escort loom too short to reach the headlight units. You can (as I did) take a pair of headlamp looms from a Mini: they have a bulb holder for the sidelight which then lines up with the gap in the reflector of the standard Escort round sealed beam unit, which means you don't need separate side lights. The wire colours for this part are: black = earth, red = sidelight, blue / red = dip, blue / white = beam.
Some posh Escorts had these but most did not. You can take your pick at the scrapyard, but the most practical ones I found are the standard Ford ones on Fiestas / Escorts / Sierras. They are a twist fit into the bodywork, in case you can't work out how to get them off the donor car. This makes it easy to fit them to your aluminium panels.... They should be wired in with the front indicators, by connecting feed wire to feed wire and earth to earth.
Assuming you are using a BL wiper motor, you have the problem that the wire colours are different to those on the Escort. However, don't panic.
The Escort has five wires to the wiper motor, in two groups - two power wires (green and red, from the column stalk) which have a grey plug, and three other wires via a black plastic connector to a headlamp-type plug on the wiper body (these are the motor earth and the park wires).
The BL motor also has five wires doing the same jobs, going to a 5-way multi connector with 4.8mm female spade terminals which plugs into the wiper unit. You should cut off this connector with as much wire to spare as possible when you get your motor from the scrapyard. You can remove the wires from it by poking a small pointed object into the business side of each terminal - there is a small cut-out - and bending the non-return lug flat. This allows you to use new terminals. Or, you can leave the wires in place and make soldered connections to the Escort wires. Up to you.
The big question is, which Escort wire to which BL wire? OK - BL black is the motor earth, which goes to Escort brown / white. Escort green is low speed, and goes to BL red/green. Escort red is high speed, going to BL blue/green. Escort black/violet is the park power supply and goes to BL green. Escort black/brown is the park earth and goes to BL brown/green.
If your Escort has a wiper delay (marked on the column stalk, plus you have a large red relay like a flasher relay) then this will work fine with the BL motor. Its wiring isn't detailed in the Haynes manuals, so I can't help if you don't have one but want to add one.
The Sierra stalk switches are a direct replacement for the Escort ones, although the Escort ones ought to fit onto a Sierra column.
BUT
1) the hazard switch on the Sierra unit won't work with the ignition off, so you will need an alternative hazard switch - either the original Escort one or an after-market model. You can take the hazard switch out of the Sierra unit without too many problems.
2) the screen wash pump switch on the Escort right-hand column stalk has only one terminal because it is earthed inside the switch. The Sierra switch does not have this facility. The way round this is as follows: look at the Sierra column switch terminals with the stalks facing you and the terminal pins uppermost: the top left-hand pin is the earth side of the washer switch. The Escort connector has no pin in this position, but it does have a hole to take one. You can buy new connector pins (Vehicle Wiring Products, for example, page 11 3mm female pin with non-return tag). Take a pin, crimp or solder an earth wire into it, push it into the corresponding hole in the Escort connector and then to an earth point on the chassis.
Your hazard lights must work with the ignition off or on. The original Escort loom uses only one flasher unit to work indicators and flasher, and does this by having a special switch which I couldn't find a replacement for. The original switch has seven terminals:
A: flasher unit feed -
1 and 7 in the photo. (Two
terminals at the top of the switch body, a black/yellow feed wire and
a black wire to the flasher unit) which is "on" when the hazard
lights are off) .
B: battery input - 2 and 3 in the photo (Two terminals on the lower
half of the switch body), a red and a brown which gives power to the flasher
unit when the ignition is off)
C: hazard flasher supply - 4,5 and 6 in the photo (Three terminals
on the lower half of the switch body), a black/white/green input from
the flasher unit and two outputs to the lights, black/green and black/white.
Internally the switch keeps the battery input and the hazard
flasher supply groups of terminals separate (otherwise the hazard
lights would be permanently on).
Your standard after-market hazard switch has only six terminals, in a group of two and a group of four. You need a separate flasher unit for your hazard lights if you change to one of these switches. Proceed as follows: take a battery feed (red) wire to the B terminal of the new flasher unit, and put in a new wire from the L terminal to any one of the group of four terminals on the new switch. Connect the two wires which were on the old flasher unit feed (terminals 1 and 7 of the Escort switch) to the pair of terminals on your new switch. Lose the black/white/green wire (cut it off short and tape it back into the loom). Connect each of the remaining three wires (black/green, black/white and the red supply wire) to any three of the four other terminals (I mean one terminal per wire, not all wires to one terminal!). If your new switch has a telltale lamp, take a short wire from the fourth terminal to the positive side of the lamp, and an earth wire from the negative side to earth. Voila, as the French say.
There are many ways of getting a set of rear lights, such as buying a trailer lighting board for about £20. For SVA purposes you must have: indicators, stop lamps, rear side lights (tail lights), a rear fog light and two reflectors. I got my lights from Holdens (see Links page): they are compact units which have all the above lights, and you can get them with either fog light or reversing light. They cost just over £12 each, which is pretty reasonable. They are E-marked.
Note: the aluminium light mountings must have their rear edges covered in order to pass the SVA test, as they are made of sheet metal. I had to modify mine by using strips of rubber (from a bicycle inner tube) which I glued first to the outside of the plastic light unit and then after fitting the aluminium, folded back over the outside, covering the exposed metal edge.
Dashboard Switches
In addition to the hazard light switch detailed above,
you might want to put in a new brake test/warning light (you have
to have one for SVA, and there is of course one on the Escort loom). This
switch is a direct substitution for the original one.
The only other switch I bothered with was a rear fog
light one (my Escort didn't have rear fog lamps, and you must have
at least one for SVA). The supply should come from the dipped beam
circuit. There is a proper wire colour for the rear fog lamp feed,
but I can't remember what it is. I used a brown/red wire because there
weren't any others of that colour in the loom, and it was easy enough
to remember. Rear fog lights are powered by the dipped beam circuit in
every car I have come across, although I have never understood why you
don't need your rear fog light when you are driving on full beam in fog.....
I got all three of my dashboard-mounted switches from Holdens (page 78
£5.71 each plus £1.19 each for the connectors, as they were
considerably cheaper than the modular ones in the Vehicle Wiring Products
catalogue (their hazard switch is a massive £17.33).
Assuming you are putting in a cooling fan and using a x-flow engine, you should have got a Fiesta (or similar) temperature switch in the thermostat housing you found in the scrapyard. To get this to control your fan you could just wire a supply to one side of the switch and the other to the fan, taking the earth lead from the fan to the chassis (after checking the fan is blowing or sucking as required). However you ought to use a relay to switch the fan on and off. You need a simple (and cheap) 4-blade relay - I paid £1.85 for a 40-amp one from Vehicle Wiring Products because it was the cheapest (2p cheaper than a 20 amp one). The relay will have the following numbers on the terminals: 30 (supply from ignition switch terminal 30, i.e. on when ignition is on), 87 (output to fan), 85 and 86 (switching current - it doesn't matter which terminal is wired "live"). Proceed as follows: run a cable from the black terminal of the ignition switch or from the fusebox to the relay terminal 30. You ought to have an in-line fuse in this cable. Connect the output from terminal 87 to the fan input, connect the fan output to the chassis. Connect a similar feed wire (which could be the same one) to the control input, terminal 85. Connect terminal 86 to one side of the temperature switch, and the other side of the temperature switch to earth. Do not connect the fan circuit (heavy current) to terminals 85 and 86, as this won't work. To make life easier you can buy a relay holder for £1.95 from Vehicle Wiring Products which has fuse holders in it. Using a relay holder is a good idea because once it is wired you can't plug the wrong cables into the relay.
The dashboard wiring tends to get messy because unless you have a removable scuttle it is hard to get at. The main bits are:
1 - panel lights and earth: you should have panel light feed wires (grey/yellow) hanging out of the dash area of your loom - they often get cut and adapted in the life of a car as accessories are added and removed. They go to the panel lights, preferably only using one wire to keep the mess at bay. Depending on the instruments you are using, illumination will differ. With after-market gauges or salvaged Smiths ones, the panel lights sometimes have a red feed wire and black earth wire because of the old British standard system. If you want dimmable panel lights all you need to do is find a dimmer switch in a scrap car and wire it into the FEED wire. Don't put it in the earth wire unless you are sure no other dash components are using that particular wire.
If you want to use alternative telltale lights, you need only wire the relevant sender wires to one side of your new lights and the other side to earth. The exception to this is the oil pressure light, since it earths through the engine block. This circuit needs a live feed to its telltale lamp (it uses the voltage reg. feed in the original dash) and the blue/green wire goes to the negative side of the lamp, thence to the sensor on the engine.
I don't think you will get a new one - I built a kit car 15 years ago from a Mk1 Escort and couldn't find one then. But you can make the grotty old one look like new: take a toothbrush and some metal polish (e.g. Autoglym) and rub vigorously. I made a replacement cover for mine out of acetate sheet which I got from a model shop, glued with super glue. Because the connectors to the box are moulded onto the loom I would not advise getting an after-market fuse box. Beware when plugging those connectors in, too - they go in either way, so if you finish your wiring and find that the left-hand headlight is wired to the ignition, this is what has gone wrong. I know - I did it.
P.S - last time I went to an autojumble I found a brand new Mk2 fuse box going for £12. Unfortunately I had finished my wiring by that time.
If you want to change an inertia starter for a pre-engaged one (e.g. if you are using a Sierra gearbox, though I think some Escorts had pre-engaged starters), you won't need the old solenoid because the pre-engaged starter has the solenoid mounted on it. After you have finished modifying your Sierra engine backplate to get it to fit your x-flow (the x-flow plate starter holes don't match a Sierra gearbox) you need to make the connections as follows: red battery cable - the big one - to the big terminal on the starter solenoid, and the black/red cable which was connected to your old solenoid, which runs from the ignition start position, to the small terminal. There is a third terminal on the solenoid, but it is the output to the starter motor and should not be touched.
You will probably have to replace lots of connectors as you go along - I suggest you steer clear of the stuff sold in bubble packs in Halfords (pre-insulated terminals) because it is horrendously expensive and this type of terminal doesn't stand up well to exposure to the elements. Get the Vehicle Wiring Products catalogue, and get a supply of male and female 6.3mm spade connectors with non-return tag (2 female to 1 male, because you use far more of them) and some of their 6.3mm multi-connectors, which are insulated holders for the spade terminals. I got an 8-way (for the rear loom connection), two 4-ways (for the headlights), ten 2-way for indicators, fan etc. and lots of 1-way ones. Together with loom wrapping tape (5 rolls, but I only needed 2), adhesive insulating tape, relay, relay holder and a few other bits, I paid about £30 for all the connectors. I still had to go out to get the odd one from Halfords, all the same. Earth connections are best done with plain uninsulated ring terminals, and you should solder the wires after crimping.
Soldering iron - essential for joining wires where you want to extend a cable, and for making crimped joints really good. You should solder all connections inside the loom, not just twist the wires together and put tape over them.
Crimping tool - for the spade terminals and the odd Halfords terminals. I have an £4.99 basic model, which is fine.
Wire stripper (optional but faster); knife (for cutting tape), black permanent OHP pen and white tape for marking wires, 12v circuit tester screwdriver (£1.99), very useful for fault finding, multi-meter (useful for checking circuit continuity with the ohms facility and for checking the quality of earth connections.
You must protect wires where they pass through bulkheads by using a rubber grommet. There are lots of different sorts available, and they are cheap - but you can find them on scrap cars for nothing. Where your main loom goes through the bulkhead you will probably need a seriously big grommet, and the ideal one can be yours if you look on a Sierra where its engine bay wiring disappears into the interior of the car.
SVA
There are several sections of the SVA test which affect the electrical
system. You should check them in the SVA manual, but here are some pointers:
Lights and position of lights: you must have the
obvious lights (indicators, hazard lights, headlights, sidelights, stop
lights) and also a rear fog light. The units must either be E-marked or
else give an light equivalent to an E-marked unit. There are detailed
instructions for the position of lights relative to the sides of the vehicle
and to the ground, and angles of visibility.
Security / tidiness of wiring
Untidy wiring, poor connections or lack of protection for the loom from
abrasion or heat could all be failure points, as they could for an MOT
test.
Headlight alignment - should be set up properly before either SVA or MOT.
Compulsory components
-a brake fluid warning light which is visible to the driver and
which illuminates when the level in either brake circuit is low. The light
must be fitted with a test switch to allow you to test the warning bulb.
-a hazard light circuit with a switch which has a telltale light
visible to the driver.
-a rear fog lamp whose switch has a telltale light visible
to the driver. The fog lamp must not operate in conjunction with the
stop lights.
-telltale lamps for left and right indicators and for main
beam (yes, visible to the driver).
-stop lights operated from the brake
pedal or brake fluid pressure.
- the speedometer must be illuminated so that it can be read at night.
- your ignition HT system must be suppressed to
avoid it causing electrical interference and the HT leads must be marked
with the manufacturer's trade mark or trade name, cables being marked
at least every 120mm.
I said in the earlier version of this page that you need an immobiliser
- what the SVA manual says is that you must have: "an anti-theft
device that can be activated to prevent the vehicle being driven or moved
under its own power" which can be "mechanical, electrical or
electronic or a combination of these". I know at least one builder
who just has the standard ignition switch / steering wheel lock and had
no problems with the SVA test. I used a thing called a Disconnect Battery
Terminal, page 4 of the current (2001) Vehicle Wiring Products catalogue
at £8.19 - it is a simple battery isolator for the positive terminal,
with a fuse which allows accessories and lights to work but not the starter
motor.
Dashboard projections
- when you choose switches, remember they are
not allowed to project more than 5mm from the dashboard in most instances,
which means you need rocker switches.
-there are other things you are not allowed
to have, such as amber rotating beacons, any blue light and so forth.
If in doubt, look it up. I have used a high level LED brake light mounted
on the roll bar, because I think it is a good idea - but it isn't a requirement
in the SVA manual.