Color Code Scheme for Wiring

[Bubblehead]

My -8 was wired almost exclusively with white wire. I want to add some electrical components and rewire some other sub systems and am thinking about adding a color code for different systems and heat shrink labels. There's info on labelers on VAF but I could not find where anyone had commented on color coding wiring.

For instance, perhaps all lighting wiring should be white with red stripe, flap circuit white with blue stripe, etc.

I'd appreciate hearing peoples thoughts and experiences on this subject.

[L.Adamson]

Just so I don't mess up anything polarity wise, I use red for positive, black for negetive, and green for ground wires. Other than that, I use various colors for keeping them all straight, when mating a group of wires in the wing root, etc.

L.Adamson

[Bob Axsom]

The old standard color code is
black = 0
brown = 1
red = 2
orange = 3
yellow = 4
green = 5
blue = 6
violet = 7
grey = 8
white = 9
Solid color wires are simply the color but as the number of wires gets higher in complex systems using color codes tracer colors are added to the basic insulation color and the most common base color is white. In the case of multiple tracer wires the primary tracer is wider than the secondary tracer. The color identification numbers proceed from base to the widest tracer color. A 96 wire on a schematic is a white insulated wire with a blue tracer and a 970 wire is a white wire with a wide violet tracer and a narrow black tracer. If you are designing a system to be maintained by young airmen just out of tech school the cost might be worth it but I can't see the value in it in the case of an RV. You would be better off applying small tape markers with pin identification or something of that nature.

Bob Axsom