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What fun it is discovering what previous owners added.
Overall not bad, I've seen much, much worse.
Tracing all these wires around, everything added goes to the green plug, including the two black relays above the panel.
This is how I found it, whatever that green plug connects to did not come with the car. I'm guessing some kind of alarm.
The Red / Black twisted pair goes to a red light in the dash and the yellow / black goes to the toggle switch in the dash tray, and it's a momentary switch.
This winter I plan to pull the fuse panel and repair the wires they tapped into with some shrink wrap. I get to spend some quality time with the wiring diagrams to see what they tapped into.
So far so good with Marilyn, everything electrical works (knock on wood) except the temp gauge. Well, it works if you smack the pod.
If there was an alarm I'd take a hard look at starter relay and the ECU and see if they have those added-on relays are spliced into the power and control for those. Tough to have it suddenly decide you're not the one to start the car.
I assume the tester is something you put in and not something that came in the fuse panel?
A single fuse tester is fitted stock in various locations depending on year - functionally it is equivalent to a '53B relay (except for the fuse tester part - which is totally independant to the circuit the relay controls). The relay can be located anywhere a standard SPST 53B relay is used, commonly located in DEF/EZF/EZK positions.
This started in 1985 with the new style CE panels.
Since my center console & glove-box were out for some HVAC repairs, figured this was a good time to tackle this.
Playing "find the wire" is always fun. Overall, although not happy to see scotchloc connectors, this wasn't the typical hack job. Wires were run well, properly secured & bundled etc.... Not bad for an aftermarket install.
Chatting with Dr.Bob, Alan, and Rob & testing this relay determined it's normally closed - this was for disabling the starter when the alarm was active. Which makes sense because the car runs fine without the alarm circuit hooked up or even the relay. The power lead to activate the relay was already cut.
I removed everything except the relay mentioned above. For now, leaving that alone until I determine how I want to remove it & repair the wires.
Thankfully, all but four wires had scotchloc connectors with spade terminals, leaving those disconnected. Cut and tapped up the other four which look to be going to the door open switches.
Long term plans: Remove the scotchloc connectors completely. I fear under these sh*tty connector are damaged wires. Not sure how I plan to tackle this. Some of them are close enough to the connector I may be able to just cut the wire, crimp on a new connector and plug it in. I don't like the idea of making the harness any shorter...
Looks like fun.
IMHO for the crimped on jumpers it would be best to put some deoxit on them and leave them alone .
Since they are already breaking the insulation and they are insulated via the connector body cover this will prevent shorts,
also the wires are still probably OK unless you try to pull them free then they can cause further damage,
Then they can break thus necessitating cutting them at the splice area and installing new connector pins.
Once the floor mat is in place you wont ever have any issues with these being on the wire,
and if you ever need to pull power your already wired for sound.
Goodluck on any path you choose
I would unplug the large connectors, de-pin the plug and then use dual wall heatshrink over the damaged insulation.
I'm paranoid I'll remove the crap connectors and find 75% of the strands damaged & it was marginally better with the schotchloc stilll attached. They used a variety of sizes so maybe they were not complete hacks and used the appropriate sizes and didn't damage the wires.
Before doing anything I'm going to map out what every wire is for. I want to weigh the risk of what I might be disabling.....
These things bug me too but whats done is done,
pulling the wire out of the slide on part will usually damage some of the wires where they break thus increasing resistance at the crimp.
Thats why I suggested to leave them alone
spray the deoxit 100 inside the crimp you dont need to open anything, it will find its way into the wire
Some of the wiring in my 81 was so hacked inside and in the engine compartment I am having to replace the entire loom for the front end of the car.
Yours looks like it can be saved. Also, glad to hear you made progress and got the car running again! I never got why people installed these stupid aftermarket alarms when the factory one was perfectly sufficient.
Also, glad to hear you made progress and got the car running again!
It was never really not running, I had the interior apart to replace the vacuum diaphragms. With this wiring intertwined with the starting circuit, I was paranoid messing with it would lead to a difficult to diagnose no-start issue. When I tried to put the CE panel boards back on, I was having a hard time getting all those extra relays to fit in, so I had a "come to Jesus" chat with Marilyn (what we named the 87) and started pulling wires....
My Yukon is in that boat. It has a very well installed remote starter hard wired into the security box. Two local places both said to just leave it alone (I don't have the fob to use it and they cannot figure out which one I need) or I could end up with a vehicle that will never start unless I replace a couple of harnesses!!!
10-27-2014, 01:36 PM
Cleaning up the fuse panel from a previous owner
