My son and I started the long process of the engine rebuild in his FC this weekend. Everything went very smoothly that is until I had a butt connector fall to my feet. Seems a previous owner had replaced a few connectors over time and just spliced them in using crimp connections and miles of gooey electrical tape, the CHEAP stuff no less! My question is how difficult would it be to completly remove the engine harness from the car without getting into the other body harnesses? Im an absolute ******* when it comes to wiring and have standards like using aircraft teflon/silver wire to make my own harnesses. Butt connectors are a no-no in my book instead using solder and 2 layers of heat shrink to make splices when needed. I would like to heat shrink the entire engine harness however how much of a pain would it be to get the entire engine harness out of the car without cutting connectors or other things off in the process.

I did my Volvo diesel in silver/teflon aircraft wire but that was a start from scratch project and didnt need any special connectors and it was simple at best. The FC harness doesnt look so simple and I have several mystery wires that had connectors at one time but were eliminated and stuffed under the tape. Computer is the stock box and I plan to retain the engine side emissions stuff unless it can be eliminated without throwing the computer into limp mode, I would rather keep the electronic box happy and not have to walk.

Your input is highly valued

Thanks

988

 

There's nothing wrong with butt (or window) splices as long as they're crimped with the PROPER TOOLING. I've been installing them for 20+ years on all of the different aircraft I've worked on over the years, and I use them on my car when needed. Heat shrink/ environmental splices are even better, but are really only needed in areas where moisture ingress is possible (in any case, they're crimped too, with the PROPER tooling, before the sleeve is heat-shrunk). With proper harness standoffs & clamps, you won't have to worry about any splices pulling apart.

If you have the FSM wiring manual, it'll make your life a lot easier. Most of the "spare connectors" you're finding are probably optional equipment wiring that was never used in the car (or things that a PO has removed), so if you're going to tear down and rebuild the harness, you'll remove them anyway.

What I like to do is get all of the necessary schematics together, figure out which wiring you'll need, and highlight each wire on the schismo as I install the wire and terminations.

I don't know if I would heatshrink the entire harness- you'll need a bit of flexibility in the completed harness, and the heatshrink I've used (on the aircraft, anyway) is pretty stiff stuff. Heatshrinking the plug terminations might work, though...

With the schematics, and since you've already built one for another car and sound like you know what you're doing, it should be fairly easy for ya...

 

soldering is the way to go. installing a butt connector takes just as much time as soldering. atleast for me it does nad i have more security in soldering

 

My opinion- soldering gives a false sense of security. It's very difficult to completely bond stranded copper wire with tin solder (usually only the outer strands are bonded). And the flux is very corrosive if not floated and cleaned properly. Solder joints also don't handle vibration as well as a properly crimped wire does.

But hell, don't take my word for it- just look at all of the cold solder problems we have on our cars

 

In relation to the previous question: If this is a complete teardown, and you're feeling froggy, go ahead and leap

I just got done making my own wiring harness. As far as I can tell, it even works if this project is in any way, shape, or form of a time budget, though, DO NOT DO IT! It took me a good 3 weeks of playing with it to get all of the wiring back together. I had a friend helping me for the last half of that, although he hadn't really done much wiring before, so he got to learn with baptism by fire.

The things I think I'd impart onto those trying it:

1) Don't worry about saving the wire. That is, you'll never be able to untangle the factory mess, so cut off the connectors (leave a nice pig-tail to crimp on to), and cut all the rest off. I made the mistake of trying to use large parts of the factory harness, and it slowed me down about a week while staring at this 18 foot mess laid out on the garage floor.

2) work with one system at a time, don't try to think too much about the whole project. Its easy to get overwhelmed, but not too bad of a gig if you deal with one system at time.

3) Mazda was nice and made everything their own unit. Got power steering? Just connect the wires directly to the PS unit. Got cruise control? Just connect directly to the unit, etc, etc etc.

My life was made even easier by the installation of a Megasquirt ECU, so I didn't have to deal with that stock, outdated POS computer. I also do not have emmissions on my vehicle, so I was only using maybe 25% of the factory harness anyway.

Good luck!

 

Looks as if the wave soldering used by Hitachi for consumer products also made its way into the FC generation of cars. I pulled everything and I mean EVERYTHING out of the car and resoldered using Kester "44" rosin core. The clock now works along with everything else and I dont get the intermittants.

Just a bit of history through experience and training. Sony developed the art of consumer electronics wave soldering for the masses back in the early 1970s and developed solder alloys that were wave friendly. This trend moved to the masses and really took off in the 1980s with more refinements however the alloy base metals themselves seperated from copper over time and vibration, we see this in almost every FC on the road. The only real way to properly solder the PC boards in the FC cars is to remove the old solder the best you can, use a chemical stripper to remove the old flux and resolder everything using a good 60/40 solder and deflux again. The reason for this is because the old alloy doesnt mix well with standard 60/40 however it looks good and lasts for a good number of years. The old flux on the other hand stays behind down in the lands and lead through holes and when heated will boil off making the applied solder boil and leave a poor connection behind. Repeated attempts to correct the boil-off will result in the copper pad lifting from the board as the heat used will activate the old flux and it attemps to clean everything including the adhesive used to hold the copper trace.

During the 1980s everyone in Japan was busy trying to cheapen and copy from the other guy, look at some of those 80's VCRs and the solder quality of the boards themselves, its terrible! I spent lots of time working on those things as a teenager and during collage days. I came to the point in the mid 1990s of going back in time and using vacuum tubes along with resoldering every solid state thing I had. So far my first CD player is still with me having bought in in June 1984 and that is a Technics SL-P8 along with the family TV that survived 3 of us growing up, Zenith Chromacolor-II. Hell I still have my first walkman that I got when I turned 13 and that was New years 1983! It too had a visit from the soldering iron and still gets used today. Maybe Im behind the times here...

Anyway go solder up your electronics in your FC now, its not that hard!

988

 

What I did was marked all the connectors to the parts I was removing from the car. I removed all emissions, as well used a JDM harness. I then removed the harness and striped it. I went as far back as possible in the harness and removed the items I was no longer using. In addition to this I cut and crimped and insulated all of the factory cross over looping nightmare they have to accommodate the directions I was running the harness. I then split the harness apart and ran it each direction I wanted and taped and loomed it back up.

Here are some pics of my test fitment after rewire. Harness was then pulled back down and fully wrapped and heat shielded.

 

Where are are you getting your teflon tape and other electrical supplies from. I do a good amount of electrical work and can never find good heat and electical interference proof "wrap". It's that mesh tubing that you can route your wires in. Do you know where I can get it?

 

Most of my stuff comes from Terminal Supply and Tessco. The teflon/silver wire Im refering to is liberated from scrapped aircraft thanks to Wentworth Air. My high-end connectors are Deutsch connectors where and entire 6 way connector can cost around $3.00 to make but never give any trouble. They are an OEM type connector and the correct crimper is going to set you back $350 alone, not for the weekender.

Good heat shrink is available from 3M through Viking Electric supply and Graybar electric. It comes in many colors, sizes and with or without the resin sealer, not cheap however. You might want to look at the Thomas Registry to find OEMs and suppliers for these products.

988

 

Now when you refer to the JDM computer does that have the same emissions I/O system or is it strictly fuel control? Right now I have that 133 (?) computer right now and even a binary image of the PROM set itself however no way to decompile the data. The processer seems to be a primitive 16 bit with 32k onboard memory but who makes I have no idea. Its a Hitachi house numbered processer.

Now where can I get my hands on the JDM spec computer? I dont have a grand laying around for an aftermarket computer and I would like to remove the emissions crap as it did more harm than good in those days. If Im going to go through the trouble of making a new harness I would rather do it in a clean manner and eliminate the rats nest of vacuum hoses and switching solinoids.

I too am an experienced electronics technician working from consumer electronics to designing and prototyping the first DDECS system used by Cummins, I also had a hand in patents for the high frequency switching supplies used in automotive and marine electronics. Been around the block a few times and know where all the bumps are in the road..

988

 

Look into a Megasquirt system if you want to go standalone - it sounds like putting one of those together would be a fun weekend project for you. You then get complete control over fuel delivery, and I believe the Megasquirt II can control timing as well. You'll be removing the emissions stuff, and I'm pretty sure a Megasquirt can be built for well under $500.

Kids: Regarding soldering/crimping, listen to Wayne. If it's good enough to trust at 30,000 feet with 400+ people, it's probably good enough for your car. However, needle nose pliers, vice grips, channel locks, and other such tools aren't proper crimping tools.

-=Russ=-

 

Dammit, Syonyk, I was about to recommend the MegaSquirt

badge988 - Definately take a look at www.megasquirt.info. The problem is that even if you come up with a way to decode the data of your processor, make a better fuel map and all that, you're still stuck with a static map AND a slow-*** processor. Megasquirts use Motorola MC68HC908GP32 processors, 8 Mhz internal bus

As far as costs go, I think I have about a total of 250 into my standalone job, including the wires and misc. costs.

The only limit of the Megasquirt, is that the trailing code is not quite stabilized yet, but by the time you get yours assembled and installed, it most likely will be

In the last electrical thread that I made, there was a link posted by Clousborne, about how to properly crimp. I think it bears repeating just for the record, the 4th type of "Good crimp tool" shown is what I use, it costs about 20-25 dollars. It seems to work alright, just take a bit more muscle than the plush 300 dollar professional units

 

I offer a quality harness wrap for a reasonable price

 

Thanks, Russ, sometimes I feel as if I'm wasting my time and experience on this forum, lol...

Soldering correctly is an art form, with many variables that a first-timer has no clue about (correct flux procedures among them), as I'm sure 988 can attest. He sounds like he's got plenty of time under his belt using an iron.

Nice little synopsis of the history of Jap soldering techniques, too, 988

If you don't know what "tinning the wire" means, don't try to solder. My little piece of wisdom for the day (kind of like Hailer's "Guess of the Day")...

 

Wayne: I have been advocating proper crimping techniques here and other forums for a Looooooooooooooooong time and its a tuff battle. But I agree with you 100%

 

998: I'll stick with my reliable VE Injection pump on my Cummins 6BT, thank you very much

 

You know guys - it one thing to advocate proper crimping and soldering techniques, and another to actually tell us what these proper techiques are, or where we can get information about them. I am very interested in learning how to propely run a harness and its connections and terminations, but I am not in the engineering field so I can only learn from my own mistakes and from sources such as this forum.

So, dont tell us that there are techiqes out there. We know that, were not stupid. Instead tell us what they are and how to implement them. Tell us what a proper crimping tool is, tell us what braizing is and how to do it, tell us what a proper type is solder is for automotive electric applications, etc... I buy my stuff at radio shack...you know why? Because I dont know better. So, were ready to listen.
-a
(eagerly awaiting for someone to tell me to search - sarcasm)

 

http://workmanship.nasa.gov/lib/insp.../frameset.html

 

http://marvin3m.com/connect/

 

The only change in the JDM ECU is that there is no EGR valve and the CAS sensor is not part of the body harness. There is no need to use the JDM ECU. However the JDM harness has a few different length connections and goes to the other side of car. Rewiring mine also made this direction conversion a breeze.

JDM importing junk yard/ebay. I don’t consider myself an experienced electronics/electrician, only think I have enough skill/knowledge to get the job done with a few more headaches then the next guy.

 

i usually use rosin core solder, and you really shouldnt use acid core solder because it leaves a residue on the connections and isnt as strong. but i dont really know what braizing is. the proper way to use butt connectors is to 1 not use the cheap *** plastic ones from auto stores but to use lead or metal ones, crimp the connections, heat the buttconnector with a soldering iron and stuff a little bit of solder in each end of the buttconnector with the wires crimped in it, top it off with some heat shrink and your ready to go. thats how i like to do it

 

Thats a great start. Thanks Banzai.
-a

 

the engine harness is the easiest one to take out, I myself had a wiring harness nightmare and i got a parts car and took all the wiring (except for the tranny harness), and swapped it into my car, right now im in the process of installing everything onto my engine so i can get it fired up

in total to take out/swap all the wiring i would say it took me about 10-15 hours

the engine harness only tho is simple it should only take like an hour or two to take out at tops

 

Bonzai gave you some good sites there, but soldering (and to a lesser extent proper crimping) just cannot be taught very well with just words on a page. It is learned, just like troubleshooting with schematics...

The first lesson to learn is to always pull fairly hard on the connection you just made, whether solder or crimp. If it fails, you're not doing it right, or using the wrong tooling. Not talking about PCB's (circuit boards) here, just wiring terminations and splices...

Believe me, if I could help you guys out by typing words, I would. As it is, I think most of my instructions on troubleshooting things go over most of your heads, but I try to keep it simple

 

The type of flux depends on the base metal you're using. Acid core is actually better for removing the oxidized layer on certain things...No matter what type of flux agent you use, clean up is very important...

FWIW, when I solder stuff (my last job was installing a little DC motor and switch into my kid's model aircraft carrier, lol), I use solid core solder with a seperate tin of flux off to the side. Makes tinning the wires much easier...

I've never heard of lead butt splices, but I would recommend not using them. Lead is far too soft to keep its shape after the crimp.

And the auto parts store- type butt connectors you're flaming? They work perfectly well if you have the right crimper. Get the aluminum covered, copper based ones.

The ultimate splice is probably hard for you guys to find. We call them enviro-splices. Basically a metal sleeve that's crimped with CALIBRATED crimpers (the expensive ones 988 was talking about earlier). A plastic heat shrink sleeve is then pushed over the metal sleeve, and heat shrunk. Also a gooey plastic seals up the ends when heated. Nifty little things, it's what we use on the planes most of the time...