SwornEnema

I'm not going to bore all of you with all the details, but I hacked up my wiring harness in order to remove it to fix the trouble spots. With the stock motor, is it better to replace this harness with a good Painless universal, as I plan to delete some circuits from the stock car? Or would it be better to replace this wiring harness with a stock one for the time being. This is a future track car, as the body is already beat, and the interior was trashed, and I plan to swap the engine. I just thought that it would be better to do the Painless at the same time as the swap, unless its not hard to redo it for a swap.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Will Feather

Lots of work either way, I lost a car to this.. thought I would rewire a car, ended up parting.

But I have an entire body harness (most connectors labelled) and an engine harness for sale if your interested...

seafeye

i put in a painless fuse panel in my 944 race car. Wasn't difficult. Just took time.
Keep the 944 engine wiring harness and gut the rest. I did use Autometer gauges the stock ones made it too complicated. The factory body harness is way way too much wire for a track car.
BTW i kept my car street legal, so the horn, lights, blinkers all still work.

Contact this guy if you want some hi hi quality wire.
http://www.advanceautowire.com

SwornEnema

Banana-How much? I'm currently weighing my options

seafeye-Very similar overall plan to what I'm doing, it's just I'm trying to figure out if a universal should be done pre-motor swap, or during the motor swap. It would be a no brainer if it is a shell, but I don't have the money for a swap now, and I don't know how hard it would be to rewire it in the future, if I do end up doing a swap.

seafeye

My motor never left my car. Would have made the front wiring a little easier but get a good fluke dmm and a power probe and the front part of the wiring harness can stay. Just cut and run wires from the fuse box to the cut harness.
I spend hours looking at wiring diagrams but the power probe made more sense. Just add power to the cut wire and have a helper tell u what light just turned on. Then label it. Same for the wires to the back trunk area. Just cut the harness beside the drivers seat and you will only have 6 or 7 wires needed for the lights/fuel pump/sender. With aftermarket gauges you can just run one power wire and one ground. Then each gauge needs it's sender wire. Fairly simple. Just takes time.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Black-Power-...#ht_1044wt_986

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Fluke-87-Tru...ht_8237wt_1307

See if you can find one used...

SwornEnema

I already have a good enough Multimeter, power probe would help. I guess the best way to re ask what I was asking, how much many wires did you have to connect into your engine harness. That's more what I'm worried about, since I dont want to have to redo too much wiring upon swapping. I know the univeral would be better in the long run, since this is a gutted car, that I'm slowly prepping for track use. I will likely only run a tach for a while, since I can figure speed based on RPM.

Is that box under the hood on the drivers side? Isn't there water that gets to that area, or does the box work well? The main thing that is intimidating for me is all the wires going through the firewall, I dont even know how to sort in between DME wires and car harness wires on the engine compartment side easily.

seafeye

I will try to explain what i did. I ended up cutting my engine harness and in retrospec i wish i had not. Keep the connector and cut on the car side of the connector. BTW my car is a 1987. But the color wires should be similar.

Now you should only need to give power 12v to these wires.
RE/BL
RE/YE
BK/GN
Have those 3 on your ignition switch.

And on your starter push button momentary switch have these:
Purple
RE/BK


Connect the BK/GY directly to your Negative battery post.

Now you need to run a PINK wire from the connector to the Positive on the Ignition Coil.
And on the Negative side of the coil you run the GN to the Engine Harness.

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The alternator is already connected to the starter then the battery. So you do not have to fool around with any thing there.

The fuel pump needs power.
So you have a main power wire going to the fuse panel. Then from the fuse panel to a dash switch. From the other connector on the back of the switch you run a wire to the fuel pump. The fuel pump should already be grounded by the chassis.

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Really for all the other items like Gauges/Lights/horn....you will have the fuse panel powered with a red wire straight from the battery. Maybe put a emergency disconnect somewhere in between, The run all your accessories off the main fuse panel. As much or as little as you desire.

Good Luck.

I am a high school drop out so if my writing skills are too good then you will understand.....

Good Luck. Any other questions.....ask away!

seafeye

As for the wires to the fuse box....I used the stock place for my panel. If your car is an earlier one then you do not have this location. I have a cover for it so it stays bone dry.
You can mount the fuse panel anywhere. Closer to the engine keeps wire lenghts shorter. Some people like to keep all the weight as low as possible. YOu can mount it up under your dash to keep dry. Anywhere really.

I gut all the wires going through the firewall. Took out the complete dash. Think of two cuts for the body wiring harness. One for the front lights and the one by the drivers seat for the rear lights.
Oh and one for the engine harness. All the stock fuses and wires can be tossed. Unless you are using the stock gauges/heater/ac etc....in which case you may want to keep it. I will try find some pictures of my project.

So far my car has been bullet proof (Wiring wise). Always starts, stops and all lights work. Except for left brake light. (Bit dim). Most likely bad grounding points from the factory.

seafeye

Sorry i didn't take more pictures. Not like you don't get the idea of the birds nest i had going on.....

odurandina

this isn't an isolated event. electrical problems END 944s.

SwornEnema

seafeye-you just made this sound a lot easier than I thought it was. I'm sure I'm going to have some issues doing this to my car, but I had similar ideas in mind. I'm already committed to removing the pop ups to cut weight, and I completely gutted the car, including any and all sound deadening. The lack of pop ups is going to eliminate a little wire. I bought a painless 12 circuit, and I plan on using most of the circuits normal, but theres a couple things I may rig up due to the lack of AC and internal fan, etc. The only thing I have to figure out, which would be advised against is going either crank windows, or using motors from another car with cheaper motors, as 300 dollar motors are not attractive to me.

All the advice is very sound, and I will definitely use this when I'm working on it. Some pictures as to what I got myself into:

Not sure if the links will work so here's a link to my photobucket:
http://s1247.photobucket.com/albums/gg632/WorstEnema/