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Back when I still had my Max, I used to move a bunch of friends around town. Worked great... Just pile that shit in the back and away you go.

MightJeff has nothing on Jean.

You win

Woah hah. Nice load. I wish I had pictures of some of the loads of bails of hay we loaded up the old Datsun pickup at the farm back in the day. Those were insane. Had a 2.5 miles drive on what was more or less a private road so we just loaded the hell out of it.

[quote=""BATMAN""]MightJeff has nothing on Jean.

[/quote]

You can almost hear the music...

People go nuts over those little diesels. I still don't quite know why.

Jeffs rear axle is still stronger...

I thought I finally killed it yesterday. But the ugly little bastard still lives

So I'm coming back from the junkyard of all places, where I got an exhaust manifold for the eventual 6G74 engine swap. I'm at an on ramp to the freeway, and one of the panhandlers tells me I'm leaking something bad. It's only a few minutes to get home, and I've run it low on coolant before, so I decide to make a run for it. Worst case scenario, I frag the engine I'm replacing anyway, and I have to have it towed.

About 2 miles from home, it starts lugging bad. I make it to my exit, and it stalls at the light. Somehow I got it to restart, and limped it the last half mile home. It stalled right in front of the house, but managed to coast into the driveway. This tough little monster got me home

After it cooled off for a bit, I popped the hood and found out the lower radiator hose burst. So at least it wasn't the water pump I put in a few months ago. Just for laughs, I tried starting it. It fired up like nothing was wrong At least at this point, I'll have a shot at moving it into the garage under its own power. That's a relief given the slope of my driveway.

I'm almost starting to feel bad about replacing this engine. These old 12-valve engines really do seem to be unkillable.

It'll be a while before I get to do anything with it though. I'm getting shit about my cars, again. So it's either going to sit until winter, or I'll throw a bandaid on it and try to sell it as-is.

Time for a new nervous system

Holy mother of god! I wish I could do things like that!


Coop

It's not like I'm building it from scratch or something.

On the 3S, the engine harness is separate from the rest of the car, and it's mostly plug and play between the different years and models. I'm eventually going to install a 98 VR4 harness into Vira's car so I don't have to use an adapter harness for the flash ECU. It'll be very little work.

The truck and the Montero Sport where I got this harness from, are not built like that. Both of them have one harness from the firewall to the bumper. It includes the all the accessories and the electrical distribution for the whole vehicle. The Sport also has an integrated automatic transmission controller.

So I'm going to strip out just the engine parts from the Sport harness.

Then I'm going to take the front body harness I kept from the red truck, and remove the engine controls from that.

That'll leave me with one Max body harness, and one 3.5L engine harness. I'll have the two join to each other with one or two connectors from the Sport harness. Most of it's already on one connector anyway.

That way, if I decide to do a MIVEC swap down the road, I just have to build a new harness for that engine and ECU rather than re-do the whole front of the truck again.

Here's the "simplified" harness. Everything here is directly related to the engine.



I underestimated the amount of stuff that's still present on the left. I'm hoping to shorten it up and merge it all into one or two connectors that'll go behind the glovebox.

Next thing I'm going to do is strip down the Max chassis harness and then figure out how to merge the two.

Yes you are making a custom harness in a way that you are going over every wire. You might as well have just ran the wire and made a custom harness.

Coop

[quote=""Jeff V.""]Here's the "simplified" harness. Everything here is directly related to the engine.



I underestimated the amount of stuff that's still present on the left. I'm hoping to shorten it up and merge it all into one or two connectors that'll go behind the glovebox.

Next thing I'm going to do is strip down the Max chassis harness and then figure out how to merge the two.[/quote]

Been there. Fun. Isn't it?

[quote=""DCIV""]Yes you are making a custom harness in a way that you are going over every wire. You might as well have just ran the wire and made a custom harness.

Coop[/quote]

Much more of a pain in the ass. You need to source wire, connectors, pins, etc. Then when it's done draw yourself up a diagram with the wire colors you ended up with. Would take 2-3x longer and cost significantly more unless you build harnesses for a living and already have all of it.

This is a dumb question that I should really know the answer to - but....

What's a good wire and loom to use for making a simple wiring harness? I have to make a new one for the AIT/MAP sensors to put the AEM EMS back in my Spyder. Before I just soldered into the MAF harness for the AIT, and I think the EGR plug for the MAP. I'd like to have a clean setup, so thinking I'd just make a custom harness for those, and fuel pressure sensor, and maybe the boost solenoid, and possibly a "real" oil pressure sensor.

If I do oil pressure, I'd likely just replace the single-wire stock one with a 3-wire sensor and run it into the EMS. I can display it on my LCDBC (the climate control screen now shows boost/WB02, so I have room).

If I went through all the trouble, I'd want it to be "good". Any recommendations?

Matt wrote:If I went through all the trouble, I'd want it to be "good". Any recommendations?

I'm in the same boat. Part of the reason I'm going to so much effort is because I want to see just how nice I can make this. So I'm going to try to find a source for quality parts. Better than the crap you buy at O'Reilly anyway.

I may raid the VW parts bin. The harnesses on my Audi are gorgeous. You can buy all of the parts from the connectors to the pins to the fittings right from the dealer. They all have part numbers molded into them too. Mercedes, BMW and Volvo use similar parts.

The interior parts of the harness are wrapped in Tesa fabric tape. I'm not 100% sure, but I think the engine bay areas that aren't covered in corrugated loom or rubber tubing are done with fluid and heat resistant Coroplast tape. You can get both on Amazon.

For the actual wire, TXL is good. Brett used it on the flash ECU harnesses he built. It's flexible and chemical resistant.

I still need to find a source for corrugated loom. I'm sure there's a VW part number for it somewhere. My car has a bunch of nice 45* and 90* conduits for the wire loom.

Once I've got my chassis harness laid out, I'll start a more serious search for conduit.

Personally I'm partial to the braided loom and heat shrink.
I'll see if I can dig up a pic of one of John Reed's harnesses

Well I couldn't find the one I was looking for so this will have to do.

This is interesting Jeff. It's quite a bit of effort but should work well once you finish.

If it's any consolation you only need to run a couple new wires back through the harness if you use the stock wiring like I did. I don't mind my conversion harness in the cab. Actually have it tucked behind the kick panel now. Your way does have the potential to be even cleaner though.

Excited to see what you do though.

Steve1 wrote:Personally I'm partial to the braided loom and heat shrink.

Those are gorgeous, but way overkill for my humble little truck. It'd cost a fortune too.

Steve2 wrote:If it's any consolation you only need to run a couple new wires back through the harness if you use the stock wiring like I did. I don't mind my conversion harness in the cab. Actually have it tucked behind the kick panel now.

I thought about doing it that way too. It'd be quicker and easier for sure. But building it like this is fun in its own way. I'm weird like that.