ok i am doing a turbo swap. i talked to a guy about the swap and he suggested to make my own harness, this way it has fresh wires and there should be less hastle when i reinstal it in the car, without the worry of breaking 15 year old wires. he also said that alot of the plugs that im not going to use like the bac valve, power steering pump and ac i can just remove altogether. so i figured i would just take the na harness and rewire it all using the fsm wire manual to make it fit the turbo motor. well i sat down last week in my basement with the na harness in front of me and said i really need to dive into this to get it done. so i layed it all out on a sheet of plywood, took the tape and crap off of the it and stapled it to the board. now i guess the fun begins. it seems pretty straight forward for the most part. right now the main problem i have is the rats nest of vacum lines and such that are under the intake with the selonoids, that is all emissions stuff right? i dont have to deal with emissons here in new york due to the lack of smog testing so i want to get rid of these plugs and wires. can i just hack them out of the harness and not worry about them without removing the actual nest of vacum hoses and such, should i leave the plugs there and reconnect them, or should i take it all out and cap the lines off whereever they come out of a manifold or whatever? thanks in advance.

 

You are in over your head and you just ruined the N/A harness. Throw it away or spend a ton of money and get all new wires and connectors and start from scratch. If I was you I would just buy a TII harness and call it a day - shesh

What I'm confused about is you don't want to use the 15 yo turbo harness because it's old and brittle but you have no problem using a 15 yo N/A harness? Maybe I'm missing sometihng?

 

I made my harness and was not dificult. I have a Tec2.

 

see what i want to avoid is using the original harness which like i said is fifteen years old and worry about a wire in the middle of it cracking and messing up the whole harness when i go to start it. i am not using the whole na harness. i am running new wires from the old plugs with about four to five inches of original wire left on them, soldering a new wire to that, just replacing one wire at a time. and if it goes to the ecu plug and making sure the pin is the right pin for the turbo ecu. but i was told that i can remove certain plugs and wires to unclutter the harness and i would like to know which i can get rid of, in particular the selonoids that are under the intake manifold.

 

im currently installing a haltech in my car, so i removed my old harness. i decided to open it up and check it out. actually, the middle of the harness was the better part of it, even though the electrical tape wraping it and the wiring loom was brittle, the wire was still good. the worst part of the harness was right where the connectors were, where it was most exposed. the insulation had been pulled out of the connector, exposing the wire, allowing corrosion and what not.

so in my opinion, doing what you're doing, you are replacing the part of the harness that is more likely to still be good and saving the part that is more likely to be messed up.

 

You are still using 15 yo wires
You are still using 15 yo connectors
You are still using 15 yo plugs
I was told by someone who has spent the last 20+ years of his life working on EMS's and building harness for PROFESSIONAL race teams ( & me ) to NEVER under ANY circumstance solder a wire.
All you are doing here is doubling the points of failure in the wires.
This is in NO way a good idea. Start from scratch COMPLETELY or buy a NEW TII harness.

 

Anything is doable however I've rebuilt harnesses for customers and it always ends up being cheaper to buy a new factory harness (and yes, I understand they cost $900 and are difficult to get). As far as I know, there are still two S4 turbo harnesses in the southern california area according to the dealers. However you feel like proceeding, good luck.

 

not a good idea at all since some of the wire uses speical shielding