Thinking of building a body harness... super frustrated.

[Bubba]

Ok this is the issue...

I've been having what seems to be a power cut issue from the car lately. I keep popping the "Eng Cont" buss fuse in my passenger side (engine bay) fuse box. Not repeatedly, but the power cut happens daily during full throttle pulls and over the past month I've popped 4 of my 25 amp buss fuses. Thank god for spares.
Today at an autoX I had a Navy Electrical Engineer and an Army Avionics guy helping me chase wires and in the end we ended up jumping power to the ECU to get it started for me to make my hour and a half drive home.

At this point I'm either ready to hunker down and build a body harness or try to order a new OEM main body harness. Any suggestions?

I'd jump on the Painless bandwagon, but I'm sure with my genius friend helping I can replicate their work for less. I'd like to keep power windows and stuff because this is my DD also, but things like cig. lighter and other garbage need to go. Will be reinstalling AC after turbo goes on also but that's about as far as it goes.

Power Windows and locks, gauge cluster, horn, head and tail lights, and blinkers are all I can think of as other necessary DD equipment though. Everything else can be cut out if it's not a sensor or essential link in the car.

Still KA by the way.

[Bubba]

Upon further investigation, OEM harnesses are not available at all basically.
Let me hear your opinions/suggestions.

[stewiefied]

Unless your leaving the original harness in and just disconnecting it, you may find the short/problem when you go to remove it. At that point it might be better to just repair the oem one.

[Bubba]

I'm completely removing and modifying it if I am using an OEM harness.

[sil8y]

Don't forget fuel pump. ...strip the gauge cluster wires out of the main harness, then just rewire everything else. Not that hard. If you don't have climate controls or power seat belts, there's really not much to do. Leave your lights wiring from the stalk to the hazard swich and you can go basically color for color to the rest. I unwrapped mine and just removed what wasn't needed and rewrapped it. I'm betting you find the problem along the way and find its an easy fix. ...and free.(well almost, electrical tape and solder is cheaper than pianless.)

[Bubba]

Yeah I've already acquired a couple extra harnesses and started mapping out my attack plan. Gona gather the better sections of the group and start modifying. MIL-spec heat shrink and heat resistant sleeving already ordered.

Unless someone throws out a better option I'll be doing a wire tuck, accessory removal, and cluster-****ery elimination.

[ninety1two40]

I highly recommend rewiring the whole car. I've done it and it's been perfect. I have a megasquirt RB25 so my engine harness was much easier to build/interface compared to a stock ECU KA. I dont have the stock cluster, climate controls or wipers but have functional power windows/locks, and blower motor. The biggest pain was wiring the hazard switch/blinkers (had to use a 4 pole relay). For basic wiper control you can use two relays, I just havent had time/need wire them.

Also, instead of having the harnesses run over the front wheels, I routed them in the engine bay. I split the harnesses into parts, front lights/horn, engine, rear lights/fuel pump, dash. They all merge together at my power and fuse center where the glove box would be. I can post some pictures if interested. I documented all the wire colors if you have questions.

[Bubba]

Pics would help seeing that I am still modifying my harness this week. TechFlex sleeving should be there when i get home from work in a few hours.

[Mase]

I'm guessing you've checked the wiring in the wheel arches as these are usually the first to get munched on a lowered S series car? What ECU are you going to use? If you're using the factory ECU or a power fc then i'd be careful with what you do remove as parts of the ECCS system need to be in tact in order for changes to be saved to the power fc when tuning. I started with the loom and started trimming it back from there. I'd say it's probably the slower option but I struggled to find a wiring diagram that matched my loom 100%.

[Bubba]

I've deloomed it all and started removing lame **** like cruise and headlight wiring other than the actual lights. I have a Silvia front so headlight motor relays are going soon. ECU harness will just get a running through, mil-spec sleeving, and shrink wrap in some areas.

My main engine bay fuse box, one by the battery tray, seems to have the largest issue in it so I considered ordering a Painless fuse box and re-wiring that area. Anyone have any suggestions there? Not sure how many circuits I need or which one to order honestly. Help would be greatly appreciated in that department in particular. I'm about to start having DT's if I don't get to drive my car again soon. I want it ready for the next AX on the 30th.

[Bubba]

Also looking into these for future projects.

http://www.isiconnectors.com/circular.html

[Beejis60]

Bubba, I'd thought about doing this last week since I'm deleting all the useless wires in my POS atm...

But my question is, what have you effed with in the electrical system, if anything?

[Om1kron]

wiring is fun.

I'm going to re-wire a bunch of stuff in the future.

[Bubba]

Aside from soldering in the AFC Neo a year ago and switching to Silvia front nearly 5 years ago nothing has been touched until now.

[Def]

I hate wiring... I'd absolutely want to punch babies if I was having to redo an entire body harness.