Driving off-road might feel buttery smooth to you, but make no mistake it is harsh on the components of your vehicle. Here are 3 ways to make sure the wiring on your vehicles doesn't fail, leaving you stuck on the side of the trail, praying for help.
1. Contact Cleaner and Dielectric Grease.
Use this amazing stuff on all pins inside connectors to repel water and make sure all contacts remain good. These products ensure a solid connection between pins in a connector, which reduces potential resistance, making control modules happy and ensuring all the power get to where its needs to go. They also keep moisture out, preventing its damaging oxidative effects, which if left unchecked can lead to poor connections, high resistance and voltage drops.
2. Electrical Tape.
Wrap electrical tape around all wiring connectors to keep dirt, debris and moisture out of those connections. This is a super quick, easy and inexpensive way to add one more layer of safety. While you may be having fun on the trails, they are actively working to destroy your car. Adding tape not only seals out the bad stuff, its helps keep those connections secure.
BONUS TIP- make sure to fold the end of the electrical tape back on itself, forming a small tab. That way if you ever have to unwrap the tape from the connector you can easily find the end of the tape.
3. Silicone.
Use a dap of silicone on connectors that plug into control modules or other boxes. Also use this trick on nuts securing wiring connectors in place. In both cases the silicone will help the connector resist the crazy amount of vibrations your vehicle goes through when off-road.
BONUS TIP- Zip ties
Use zip ties to group wires running the same direction, together, and when possible zip tie those newly made harnesses to the chassis (for more on how to do that, check out our "Zip Tie Standoff" post) to help reduce the load on the wires. Making sure to keep the harness away from any sharp edges or seams.
You can also use zip ties to group wires coming from a switch, power bus or other multi-connection point This will act as a strain release, taking some of the load off the connectors themselves (just make sure to leave a little slack between the connectors and the zip tie.)
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