The Ford Barn - Dome light wiring Victoria

Mike V.

On page 2-15 of the Judging Standards there are some wiring diagrams for both cowl lights and dome lights. Look at the one for the Town Sedan. The Victoria is wired the same as the Town Sedan. So now let's make it a little clearer, starting at the junction box. Your wire come through the firewall over to the driver's side and fed along the windshield post to the header and turns right at the corner to line up with about the center of the header. The wire coming out of the firewall has a small diameter loom on it and goes over to the cowl and through the clip that your cowl light cross over wire runs through. Then it runs up the windshield post to the header and makes a right turn. At this point the loom stops at about six inches from that turn. From then on there will be no loom. This loom is referred to by Ford as the wire conduit. Your wire loom as it comes up the windshield post will be covered by the woodgrained moulding.
When the wire crosses over the face of the header, it is held in place by some vinyl top material cut about a half inch wide and an inch and a half long. Make about a dozen of these pieces because you will need to use more of them later. Now where the loom makes its right turn at the header, use the piece of scrap top material, wrap it around the wire loom and tack it in place with an upholstery tack. Where the loom stops, wrap the loom again with the upholstery material and tack it there. Tack a couple more pieces until you reach the center of the header. Tack these pieces along the top of the header so that you are bypassing the rear view mirror placement. Now you need to drill a small hole for the wire to go through the top bow assuming you have new top bows. Your old top bows should show you where the hole is to be drilled if you have those, if not that's okay. You need to drill through the number of top bows until you come to the bow that is in line with the switch. Bring your wire through the holes to that bow then tack it as you did before in the center then over to the passenger side door post. Usually about three tacking positions will do. Now you are at the door post. You should see a groove cut into the wood that runs down to the hole the switch goes in. Run your wire into that groove and down to the switch. By the way the wire you use should by black with a blue tracer. Cut your wire and hook it to the switch loosely. Use a new piece of wire, hook to the switch, and run that wire up the post in the groove to the top, tack it at the top then run along the wood to the back corner using the same tacking process and across to the dome light. Hook this wire into the dome light. The other wire will be your ground wire that will run from the dome light back through that top material that you already tacked in place into the corner back to just above the wheel well. Bring your ground wire down to the wheel well inside bracket and attach with some kind of screw. That is how mine was attached. In fact this is how the dome light was originally wired in my Victoria.

I just remembered, when the wire in the loom comes up the door post and comes to the face of the header, there was a groove cut into the header for that wire to sit in so that the upholstery material will fit flush and the top material is just tacked over the groove to keep the wire in the groove. If you have the old header out of the car it should show this. Also the wires running up and down the door post to the switch sit in a groove and the top material is tacked in a couple of places to keep the wires in the groove. I hope this is clear and if not, call me and I will discuss it with you. Dale Gosa.