Since I’m rebuilding the wiring harness, I need some wires - specifically, a heap of different colours in gauges between 18 and 12 AWG (1mm - ~4mm diameter, but nobody seems to use metric wire gauges for some reason).

I spent the morning visiting various parts shops, automotive electricians and electrical supplies shops in the area. None of them really had anything, although I got a good tip-off about a place in Alexandria that has the kind of stuff I need, but they’re closed on weekends and it looks like they only do large quantities of stuff.

After that, I spent an extra hour or so searching the Internet for the kind of stuff I need, and I found 12-Volt Planet. They have almost all of the stuff I need - including 18-gauge green with purple tracer!

I moved on to looking for how to build a nice harness for all these wires, but I hit a bit of a snag - there were several workable options, the best of which was heat-shrink plastic tubing. This wasn’t very good at handling intersections or crossings in the wiring harness, which are the bits you need to protect the most, judging from the wear on the existing harness. Not only that, but the shipping on those wires (from the UK) turned out to be more expensive than I thought. Not outrageously expensive, but enough to make me look at my options again.

I decided to have another shot at getting a pre-built wiring harness, and this time round I found something really good (I hope) - Autosparks (again, based in the UK) makes a really nice-looking pre-built wiring harness. I searched around on the Internet and found a couple of restorations that used these harnesses, and they look great. I’ve emailed them about some of the specifics of my car (no indicators, positive earth) and I’m now waiting to hear back from them.

I also had a look at making my own ghetto spray booth for painting a couple of smaller components that I’ve already removed from the car while doing the electrical bits. I can make a small spray booth easily enough, but there are issues with actually painting the pieces - I need an air compressor, which needs space and electricity. Space is at a real premium at the moment, and the shed has no electricity, so I think painting will have to wait for another day.

Unfortunately, this all leaves me in the position where I’m just waiting for stuff, but I kind of expected this to happen. I’ll use the time to get some non-Land-Rover-related stuff done.