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Adding a Stow Wire

Stow wires are electrically unconnected wires that are incorporated into bundles during manufacture for a number of reasons:

To ensure that a spare wire is available should a breakage occur in an in-bundle wire once it is installed in a vehicle
To offer support for future enhancements to a harness’ connectivity
To increase the strength of a harness where the termination of only a few wires at a connector can result in a potential weak point, and the termination of additional, electrically unconnected wires can increase the strength of the join

You can add stow wires to a harness design by placing splices as points at which to terminate the ends of the stow wire. As no other wires are terminated at these splices, the wire is electrically unconnected, although its presence in the harness is preserved during Harness Processing. This method supports two types of stow wire:

Full-length stow — this wire runs the full length of the bundle.
Mid-bundle stow — this wire runs from a connector cavity to a splice stow point.

Prerequisites

You are creating the stow wires in Capital Harness Designer. Stow wires can be created in Capital Logic Designer by placing splices as stow points, which can then be synchronized into the harness design. See also “Adding a Stow Wire” in the Capital Logic Designer User Guide.

Procedure

In Capital Component Manager, create a new splice part and name it STOW.
Clear the Included on BOM attribute on the splice.
In Capital Harness Designer, to create a full-length stow wire, place two splice instances on the bundle through which the stow wire is to run, following the method for Adding a Splice with an Associated Library Part. Give the splices a name that identifies them as stow points, such as STOW1 and STOW2.Note To create a mid-bundle stow to increase the strength of a connector join, only a single splice needs to be added at which to terminate the wires added to the connector.

In each case: If you are creating a full-length stow wire, place the splices as near to the bundle ends as possible to ensure that sufficient wire length is calculated for the stow wire.

Select the STOW library part created at Step 1.

Add the stow wire following the method for Adding a Wire with an Associated Library Part, and terminate each end of the wire in the X cavity of each splice as described in Terminating a Wire at a Cavity.
Create additional full-length stow wires as required, but in each case, add a subsequent splice at which to terminate the wire, otherwise the stow wires will be considered electrically connected and, if identical, will be removed during Composite Breakdown (if the option to do so is selected). Mid-bundle stow wires can be terminated at the same splice.

Parent Topic:

Wires