And boy was it a very intimidating step to take. Tonight we started and just about finished stripping my engine harness of all the useless plugs and wires and got a couple other things wired up right. For now my car is going to be running vacuum advance with a GM HEI module for an ignition, so we got that wired up. I still have a few things to do like finish taping up the harness and put loom on it, and then i'm gonna clean the crap out of it but already it looks way cleaner. I'm not worried about hiding anything because it's not a show car and i don't wanna make anything high maintenance...just getting rid of the non essentials really cleaned things up.
Here's a before shot...notice all the random crap behind the passenger strut tower, and the rotted out mess on the driver's side frame rail...that part used to be the main harness that went to the stock ignition, which is now long gone. The rest was all for emissions junk.
I didn't get a chance to take a pic of where it's at right now, but here's a few pics of the mess we got into
^^ This pic doesn't even hint at the horror that's under the dash. The biggest goal in this was to get rid of the dry rotted mess on the driver's side frame rail. We half expected that harness to simply plug up somewhere under the dash...boy were we wrong. In the end we had the entire wiring harness for the whole car unhooked.
^^ This pic is of the mess relating to the AC control ECU...or whatever the heck the ECU in an '85 is used for. There are a couple wires that we're not 100% sure are for but we think they go over to the HVAC for the AC controls.
Tomorrow i need to finish wrapping the harness and then put some loom on it, and i'm gonna have the alt tested just to make sure it's charging...i was pretty amazed that it fired right up after digging that deep into the harness, but really all that you see going across the firewall is headlights/alternator/coil wiring...only a single key on wire goes to the ignition to make the car run.
Here's a before shot...notice all the random crap behind the passenger strut tower, and the rotted out mess on the driver's side frame rail...that part used to be the main harness that went to the stock ignition, which is now long gone. The rest was all for emissions junk.
I didn't get a chance to take a pic of where it's at right now, but here's a few pics of the mess we got into
^^ This pic doesn't even hint at the horror that's under the dash. The biggest goal in this was to get rid of the dry rotted mess on the driver's side frame rail. We half expected that harness to simply plug up somewhere under the dash...boy were we wrong. In the end we had the entire wiring harness for the whole car unhooked.
^^ This pic is of the mess relating to the AC control ECU...or whatever the heck the ECU in an '85 is used for. There are a couple wires that we're not 100% sure are for but we think they go over to the HVAC for the AC controls.
Tomorrow i need to finish wrapping the harness and then put some loom on it, and i'm gonna have the alt tested just to make sure it's charging...i was pretty amazed that it fired right up after digging that deep into the harness, but really all that you see going across the firewall is headlights/alternator/coil wiring...only a single key on wire goes to the ignition to make the car run.