Okay so the idea of a typical wire tuck is simple. You cut a few wires, re-run some others, make sure everything is nice and hidden and that’s it. But what if you have to seriously hide those wires? Or if your old harness was cut and spliced so many times it’s just a clusterfuk plane and simple? You rebuild it. Eliminating what’s not needed and make proper extensions where they have to be.
Because I have eliminated the ABS, Power Steering, Automatic seatbelts and a few other odds and ends along with needing to tuck the back half other cargo areas wiring, I figured it was time for a rebuild. So I’m going to take you through the process of the rebuild.
First a pic of a FEW of the required tools…
Now the important thing to keep in mind is to bundle and mark each corresponding section of wiring as you remove them. This will help you a lot in the long run so that you’re not looking at a huge mess of tangled wires.
This is what it will look like if you don’t…
Fortunately I did as such. This will allow me to sort through everything as needed, and to help with the elimination of the no longer needed wires.
Front harness…
Drivers side and passengers side (connected to rear harness and contains the system wiring for your power windows and locks is you have them)…
20100608:
Rear harness deloomed. I left a few sections of the harness in tact to help prevent everything from becoming tangled. It is also helpful so that it is easier to navigate the harness to find plugs, and to give an idea of where the section was originally placed.
Not wanting to wait for tomorrow I busted out the downloaded Helms. I taped off all of the plugs on the rear harness that are being deleted. All in all there are about 14 plugs totaling about 80 or so wires.
A reason for leaving some of the factory tape in tact. Not only does it help in keep the original shape of the harness for navigation, but it comes in handy while pulling cut wires. In some cases plugs are connected to more the one other plug, or some of their wires are spliced together. It is very important to make sure you do not pull wires for plugs you intend to keep so you need to pay attention. After cutting certain plugs off all you need to do is tug on that color wire from the other side of the tape. Once you see the same color wire move it’s easy to just pull it all the way through. All the while keep all the other wires where they are supposed to be.
Here is what I have pulled from the rear harness so far. There will be a lot more to come. Since I am changing the wiring layout I’ll need to shorten quite a few wires, but I’ll cover that a little later. These two bundles alone weigh about 6-8 lbs. Overall I estimate to pull about 15 lbs. of wire from the rear harness.
These will be your best friends during a wiring project like this. Inexpensive and easy to get a hold of. They work great for depinning and getting into hard to reach places. Both are two different sizes.
Some fruits of the labor. This little pile of pins is only from the plugs that were left on the harness. There are plenty more on the wires cut out. I’m feeling a bit lazy so I’m just going to leave those ones in until I need them.
The rear harness bundled up and ready to be mocked up and shortened. I say shortened right off the bat because the new route of the wiring will require way less to be used. Primarily between the two door grommets. Very few, if any, will need to be extended for the section of harness that will run to the taillights.
An overall pic of everything from the rear harness minus the two pounds of electrical tape and one pound of plastic.
