Painless 12-circuit Harness replace factory harness?

[Ludachris]

With all the unused systems I now have in the car, I've started playing with the wiring and found that there is a lot I could pull out. It almost seems like it would be easier to just start from scratch with a Painless harness. Will one of their universal or pro series harnesses provide everything needed to replace the factory harness? Or would we need more than what comes in the kit? I'd pony up the $375 or so for a kit like that if it simplified the wiring.

 

[ramsack]

I would like to know about this as well. It would be nice to have fresh wire everywhere and get rid of unnecessary crap.

 

[turbosax2]

I can't comment on 1g's in particular or the Painless harness, but I've done quite a bit of wiring so I have a bit of input. Removing wires is easy. Yank the harness, remove all the loom/tape, and then it's just a matter of removing pins and snipping/soldering a few wires here and there. Reloom, reinstall, and that's it. If you plan on rerouting wires, that's when things get a bit tougher.

Do you plan on redoing the whole car, front half of the car, just the engine bay...? Maybe a good start here is to list all they systems you want to keep - this is probably easy to do if you just check out your fuse boxes and list which ones you want to keep around.

 

[92AWDHX40]

I did wiring on my car not hard just it was good practice, removed lots visible othe thatn that is tucked away the best i could. Next time it will be more involved.

 

[turbotalon31]

here is a sight i found that you should be able to design a custom harness with only the stuff u need Keep It Clean Wiring :: Home Page

 

[Ludachris]

I can't comment on 1g's in particular or the Painless harness, but I've done quite a bit of wiring so I have a bit of input. Removing wires is easy. Yank the harness, remove all the loom/tape, and then it's just a matter of removing pins and snipping/soldering a few wires here and there. Reloom, reinstall, and that's it. If you plan on rerouting wires, that's when things get a bit tougher.

Do you plan on redoing the whole car, front half of the car, just the engine bay...? Maybe a good start here is to list all they systems you want to keep - this is probably easy to do if you just check out your fuse boxes and list which ones you want to keep around.

Well, that's the thing. I started yanking wires out of the fuse box in the engine bay with the intention of relocating that fuse box to the interior. I haven't touched the car in months and it looks like spaghetti everywhere under the hood. Now I'm not sure I should have started yanking wires.

My goal was to remove wires that aren't necessary and relocate the fuse box. The wires I did start cutting went to the fuse box in the engine bay and look to be routed to the fuse box under the dash. Is it as simple as just removing the wire between those two points? If not, I might be in trouble now.

Which is what made the idea of starting from scratch so appealing. You only use the wires you need and you can route them any way you want. I mainly want to do the engine, but ideally would do the whole car to ensure I don't cause more problems using two different harnesses.

 

[92AWDHX40]

That can be done its a lot of work to just have the wires you need. i have cut my harness then moved it into the interior once, but this time i left it out in the bay. If the car is down for a long time, it would options but, i dd work hard on the wiring. It comes down to how much work you want to do to it.

 

[turbosax2]

Keep in mind this kind of kit isn't suitable to replace the ECU harness. I haven't checked it out, but it's probably geared to the chassis components like horn, headlight, etc. Depending on how many of these you have (is the car street legal?), then this could still be a pain to do. Although, having all new wires would be nice (except for the few inches right at the connectors which you'll have to solder to the new harness).

I have no idea how a 1g is wired so I can't help with removing those wires. If you had a 2g, I have plenty of documentation to help

My gut feeling says the "Painless" route would be tougher. Hopefully somebody can chime in with experience to help you out!

 

[crash89]

When I first started reading this I immediately thought about Turbosax2! Im not sure if you followed his thread about his fuse box relocation or not but it is very helpful! Im not all that familiar with 1g wiring either but Im sure its pretty similar to a 2gb. I would suggest to read through that thread of his! It helped me with my relocation!

http://www.dsmtuners.com/forums/hangout/298569-my-fuse-box-relocation-project-log.html

 

[slowgsr]

I pulled the full body harness last winter, I have no ac, cruise, ps, rear defrost, any heater controls etc. ALL I have is.

-brake lights
-headlights
-signals
-horn
-flip up motors for headlights (1990)
-wipers
-power windows
-power locks

I kept the modules I needed for the above things, and I still have the factory alarm. Other then that, I have a modified engine harness, mainly just for the sensors required for my AEM, as well as things i've added. All my fuses boxes are still in stock locations, which is fine. I hate the design of the factory wiring in these things, but for now. The reason I pulled all the extra wires out was mainly to inspect/clean up the factory wiring, as well as save some weight from the car.. how much weight? Its not a lot, but all the little bits of doing a bunch of things is what adds up.

I just laid out the harness on a long table, tagged the plugs, so I knew what went where, then just started pulling one wire at a time.

I would like to hear what you come up with, since I would like to go from scratch with a painless harness, I really don't like the 'design' of the factory dsm wiring.

Also, I have no factory cluster/wiring.

 

[steve]

In my mind to do it right you need two things that can be hard or expensive to come by, wires with factory colors and new connectors.

If you don't used the original wire colors your wind up having to do all new drawings or you have a long term nightmare. Without new mating connectors you wind up with questionable connections and potentially fragile wiring if you have to solder the wires to old pins instead of making new crimps.

Getting the right tools to make the correct crimps is one of the places where it gets expensive quickly.

 

[eclipsh]

Steve, I take it you're not a fan of the solder and heat shrink method where you leave the existing wires in the connectors? It's what I needed to do for my custom harness and everything seems fine a year later. Every wire going into my ECU is done this way as are a few under the hood. I can see it being better to do it the right way but what a headache!

One thing I ran into on doing my harness is being careful with the ground wires. It is tempting to combine them all but, if I remember right, some need to be separate from the rest to route directly to the ECU. Likewise with certain power systems like the TPS and other sensors. The harness turns into a rats-nest quickly so just focusing on one section or system at a time is your best bet. Sensor by sensor would be ideal.

 

[turbosax2]

One thing I ran into on doing my harness is being careful with the ground wires. It is tempting to combine them all but, if I remember right, some need to be separate from the rest to route directly to the ECU.

Yes, that's an important distinction between chassis ground and sensor ground. Definitely don't want to mix those up.

 

[ramsack]

Wires aren't hard to come by, but connectors will be impossible to get unless you want a massive amount of them. Mitsubishi Cable America, Inc. would be the place to get them. I have tried contacting them and received no reply. I'd imagine you'd have to be someone with a lot of money and in need of a lot of pieces for them to not even hang up the phone on you. If I had the time and money I would order a crapload of parts and make harnesses for people.

 

[juvi1624]

Yeah, I'm in the same boat as you Chris, in that I totally removed my interior this spring to redo it with just the bare nessecities. Except that in the past 3 months I may have worked on the car for 3 hours, and now how no idea where I was at. I also have a lot of relays and control module boxes that were under the dash, near the ECU, that I have no idea what they are. Any one know if they are important? And by important I mean will the car run without them? Cause I removed all creature comforts and will probably end up making a new harness for lights.