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Common Wiring Harness WH-00125

design4p

Active Member
The Common Wiring Harness WH-00125 cost over $1500 depending on what version you buy.

Looking at the wiring diagram there appears very little wiring included for such a large sum of money - $1500.

Before I commit to the common harness or do it myself I would like to know what experience other builders have had for this part of the build - The Electrics.

I will be going done the Garmin G3X route for my RV14 (in the UK)

Any guidance would be most welcome.

John
 
The main benefit of the 00125 is that it interfaces with the factory harnesses that come in the rest of the kit, wings and tailcone. These simply plug into the 00125. That said, if you get all of the mating Molex connectors and pins etc you can make for yourself and save money and modify as you like. For a new builder, the 00125 simplifies your build especially if wiring is not your thing. I used the 00125 but now that I have some wiring experience I would do it myself.
 
The Common Wiring Harness WH-00125 cost over $1500 depending on what version you buy.

Looking at the wiring diagram there appears very little wiring included for such a large sum of money - $1500.

Before I commit to the common harness or do it myself I would like to know what experience other builders have had for this part of the build - The Electrics.

I will be going done the Garmin G3X route for my RV14 (in the UK)

Any guidance would be most welcome.

John

As I have posted in the past, my one experience with the RV-14 wiring kits leads to my recommendation to just make your own wire runs. This is especially true if you what to do something other than duplicate the RV-14 factory plane and avionics. For me the standard Van?s design is good, but it does not quite meet all my design requirements.

But - Van?s sells a lot of these kits as customer demand is high. It boils down to what you are comfortable with doing yourself. But - wire is just wire. It is not rocket science.

I?m just finishing my third RV and have done every inch of wire, all connectors and full glass panels. If you have never done such work, perhaps you have a fellow builder that you can lean on to get started.

Carl
 
Its doable - a learning experience, if that's your bag

I built my own WH-00125. Bought the wire, the Molex and other connectors, and made the wiring layout board. Did a lot of planning.

Figure that it cost me around $700 and took me about 2+ months, at my pace.

Had to figure out the wire types and lengths, the connectors, and everything else; and then acquire everything - a few times. Did buy a wire labeler and about a dozen wire sleeve cartridges (+/- $40 each) and documented it pretty well.

At the time it was possible to buy a 'kit' of all the parts from Stein, not sure that it still offered. I did get some satisfaction in doing it myself, although it was a little bit of a job just figuring it all out even with the WH-00125 diagram. I did find a handful of typos and disconnects in the diagram but adjusted ok.

I installed it and a panel equipment harness from Approach Fast Stack and it all finally came together and powered up with no smoke.
 
125 Harness

Hi,

Thank you Nova, Carl and Jeff for your advice. Also looked at your build log (Carl and Jeff).

All information very valuable to me.

Regards John (In the UK)
 
I used the Stein build RV14 harnesses and the time savings was well worth the cost. When you see the quality and workmanship of these harnesses you will be hard pressed to replicate that level of experience. The Stein support is second to none if you have questions and you will if it is your first G3X panel.

I used an all Garmin G3X / GTN 625 system and they make a harness for that system. Have Stein or Approach Fast Stack make your Garmin CAN BUS harness and you will save so much time. I installed all my avionics and designed my panel but left matching hundreds of wires to the pro's that do it daily. Enjoy the process and keep your learning, skills and expectations aligned.
 
Costs

Up to you. I personally spent about 100 hours digging through the garmin manuals and other installation instructions to create my own wiring diagram. I calculated out all the wires and connectors which cost me roughly $1300 for the entire airplane. Of note, the common harnesses include very little for your G3X install and likely need to be further modified for any different equipment you may want to use.

I am happy to send my diagram to anyone who would like it as a reference, but if you truly want to know and understand your aircrafts electronics the education is well worth the time (not to mention the cost saving).

You can take a look at my build log and previous threads for other discussions on the topic if you are interested in doing it all yourself. If anyone wants the wiring diagram for an RV-14A with a full G3X suite just send me a PM or email with your email address. It also includes antenna wiring, oil/fuel/brake routing, switch wiring, etc.
 
Insure you request and get what you want

The Steins built custom harness is great if you get a custom harness to your specs. Make sure they know every detail of your build from stick grips to wing lighting. Again they are very good at doing these harnesses just need to know exactly what you want. A few catches. Vans does not like to support heated pitots. You will need a dedicated ground back to the firewall ground to insure your pitot heat does not make noise. They include power for the pitot but not the ground. (Fuselage harness kit) The wing harnesses do not even include power let alone a ground for the pitot, make sure you add these yourself as they are not included in the wing kits. Twisted pair seems to work well. Make sure you let them know for headsets what you want. They will wire the limo plugs or/and standard jacks as needed. Again Stein is a very good harness builder just need to inform and insist what you want.
 
The Steins built custom harness is great if you get a custom harness to your specs. Make sure they know every detail of your build from stick grips to wing lighting. Again they are very good at doing these harnesses just need to know exactly what you want. A few catches. Vans does not like to support heated pitots. You will need a dedicated ground back to the firewall ground to insure your pitot heat does not make noise. They include power for the pitot but not the ground. (Fuselage harness kit) The wing harnesses do not even include power let alone a ground for the pitot, make sure you add these yourself as they are not included in the wing kits. Twisted pair seems to work well. Make sure you let them know for headsets what you want. They will wire the limo plugs or/and standard jacks as needed. Again Stein is a very good harness builder just need to inform and insist what you want.

I agree and I'm happy with the results of using the SteinAir supplied harnesses. One correction: the fuselage harness does include a power lead for the pitot heat - there's a corresponding unused pin in the left wing molex so I ran my power wire (14Ga) for pitot to that open pin which corresponds to a 14Ga wire in the fuselage harness that plugs into it. I did have to run separate ground wire (also 14Ga) in wing and fuse for the pitot heat, which I connected separately when I installed the wings. I twisted the ground/power leads to the pitot heat controller from the regulator to the molex connector (but not the sense wire for regulation) and zero noise or magnetic interference from this wire (runs very close to magnetometer).
 
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Wing Harness

One other "possible" issue is the Nav-Strobe wiring is shielded in the fuselage harness and not the wing harness that comes with the kit. Seems ok for most (I've also seen where some builders had issues) but dislike chasing headset noise after the fact. Since I had some 3 conductor 18 awg. with shielded Tefzol around I pulled the 3 wires (pins 7,8,9) and replaced with 3 conductor shielded wire. If I had to do again would ask for a delete for WH-00011 R1 (2) since it's fairly easy to make one of these.
 
Landing or Taxi light

Just FYI the Vans harness and wing kits do not include wiring for a landing and taxi light in the same wing. I assume most are placing one landing and one taxi in each wing or maybe just 2 landing. There is a synch for landing (wig-wag) and strobes in both wing harness and fuselage harness so that's covered. If you use Aveo Zip Tips you will need this extra wire.
 
00125 update

After understanding and working through issues with the factory harnesses I thought I would give a quick update:
1) If I had to do it again I would order the harnesses direct from Stein and have them modify to my specs.
2) The strobes need to be wired through the wing roots including providing a pin for the shields so they can be grounded at one end of the complete strobe wire.
3) The pitot heat (If used needs to be twisted pair from the ground plane to the pitot. Standard kit just uses a single line and grounded at the pitot. I used 14 awg twisted shielded cable to cover my bases. Since I could not run an additional shielded cable I ground the shield at the wing root. For this application shielding probably not really needed but twisted wire yes.
4) There are numerous examples in the standard wiring that the shield is grounded at the root and grounded at the load side and not carried through the connector on a pin. I did not correct these but in the future would request a modification from Stein.

There are probably more and yes probably the original harnesses would have worked, maybe. The harnesses are a great time saver and probably worth the $$.
 
2) The strobes need to be wired through the wing roots including providing a pin for the shields so they can be grounded at one end of the complete strobe wire.
3) The pitot heat (If used needs to be twisted pair from the ground plane to the pitot. Standard kit just uses a single line and grounded at the pitot. I used 14 awg twisted shielded cable to cover my bases. Since I could not run an additional shielded cable I ground the shield at the wing root. For this application shielding probably not really needed but twisted wire yes.

http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=155943&highlight=wiring+parts

I didn't want to pay $1500 either, so I built it myself; there is another thread with a parts list I generated. I don't have shielded wires in my wings because I didn't know any better and ran what came with the wing kit. I have zero noise from my LED lights/strobe/nav connected up the way Van's laid out. I really don't think you need to have shielded wire all the way out to the wing tip. The wing kit didn't include a pitot heat wire at all, so I ran power twisted pair to the Garmin heated pitot; grounded to the fuse at the wing root and no noise or problems at all.

I kind of look at it like a quick-build. I probably spent $400 on wire and connectors and spent weeks doing it, added some tooling for use later. I could have saved 3-4 weeks for $1000. I still would have had to run the wires for the pitot heater.

The wiring plans from Vans for the fuse kit have the wiring lengths and they are perfectly correct I'm glad to say. So if you want to build it just as described it will work fine.

One area I definitely customized was where the magnetometer wiring connects into the system. I abandoned the wing-kit wiring for that and made my own. I also re-pinned the root connector at the wing to move the stall sensor to the other connector. By the time you put the magnetometer, pitot heater, and OAT in the left wing, there aren't enough pins available in the provided connector. So I waited till the wing was on to run the OAT wiring and it isn't connectorized. I think the original plan they built to was Dynon; the Garmin setup I had didn't match.

It is tempting to think about just running continuous wires through the wing root to the fuse because once the wings are on I doubt most of us will take them on and off. But it was super convenient to have a connector there to build the wiring and do the closeouts of fuse and wing without having to crawl around and through later to make up the wiring. In my case when the wing was installed the electrical was immediately done and that was really efficient.
 
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Shielded both ends question

Last question and maybe does not make a difference. The tail strobe is grounded at the wing root via a Y connection at the root. It's also grounded at the tail strobe. I'm modifying the harness so could eliminate the ground at the root. By the way I replaced my 9 pin Molex with a 15 pin so I could add separate taxi and landing lights along with providing a pin for the shield. Should I remove the ground at the root.
 
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