3800 swap harnesses (Page 2/20) darkhorizon NOV 19, 09:08 AM I dont understand it either Z, everyone loves doing the 400% extra work to make sure its done the absolute most complicated way possible. topcat NOV 19, 09:23 AM quote Originally posted by RideZiLightning: WHOA! Does everyone else do theirs like this? I have always just taken the loom off a couple sections, lengthened and moved some stuff around and re-wrapped it. I've rebuilt a harness that was made that way, and it was HORRIBLE. It did work, but there were so many wires that were not needed in the harness that I lost count. The other thing I found was that the person that made the harness lengthened wires that did not need to be made longer, if they had taken the time to unwrap the loom, they would have had enough wire to go to where it was needed. Lastly, by taking the entire harness apart, it will look MUCH neater when you put it all back together. RideZiLightning NOV 19, 10:23 AM Depends on what harness you use. I have always used the ones from Rivieras, the wiring to the engine is a complete and extremely obvious separate section of the harness. The rest is just excess you can pull right from the two plugs to the pcm. RideZiLightning NOV 19, 10:41 AM All this terminal has is the injector and sensor wires and that is it, plug it into the other side and just wrap the hunk of wire that leads to the pcm. Everything else can be pulled from the harness And the new project that it's getting installed on: I like this one a lot FIEROFLYER NOV 19, 11:59 AM I prefer my way for a few reasons, 1 it makes for a much cleaner instal, 2 you can make the harness pretty much any way the customer wants for things like alt, ignition module or PCM mounting location. and 3 because I meter every wire as I assemble the harness it limits or even removes the chances of missing broken wires or putting pins in the wrong spot. This way does require more work and more time but is worth it in the end or atleast is in my opinion. Now if you would like to take over this build thread go ahead I can always put my time to better use. Dan joebaldie NOV 19, 02:03 PM FIEROFLYER did my harness and everything plugged right in just like he said all though car didn't start right up.it was not his fault i had a bad icm TXGOOD NOV 19, 02:17 PM FieroFlyer I for one appreciate you putting this info on here. I agree with you. If you are going to go to the trouble of doing a swap why not check everything out including the wiring harness. Why depend on wiring that may have been smashed or put under stress when someone pulled the engine. But then again I disagree with someone else on here about putting in a 3800SC without going through the simple act of replacing the main and rod bearings that might have been subject to neglect in the oil change department. fieroboy_IL NOV 19, 02:43 PM radioflyer, I have a 4-speed man.(85 GT) on my 3.8L build, and need a harness for it. make it for that and I'll buy it. darkhorizon NOV 19, 02:59 PM quote Originally posted by RideZiLightning: Depends on what harness you use. I have always used the ones from Rivieras, the wiring to the engine is a complete and extremely obvious separate section of the harness. The rest is just excess you can pull right from the two plugs to the pcm. Its the same on every wbody/hbody harness I have used for swaps. Very easy to cut and pull the body connector wires, basically just stuff going from the fuse box to the body connectors that you take out, very obvious..... Yes you have to take the tape and sheeting off, but still I didnt hardly ever cut a wire while getting everything mounted on the motor. The advantages that dan outlines are very clear, and I fully agree, I just dont usually care about making everything EXTREMELY clean, I have sheeting over all my wires, and noone complains that it looks out of place. Also its fairly easy to re-combobulated the wiring still without cutting it. Although.. quote 3 because I meter every wire as I assemble the harness it limits or even removes the chances of missing broken wires or putting pins in the wrong spot. I have never worked with a harness that had problems in this area, so I would have t disagree, and honestly I think that it only increases error for the "first timer" that doesnt have a full grasp on whats going on. There is NOTHING WRONG and in most cases it is much "better" to do it this way if you are looking for a specific look or something, but Z and I are only saying this because a newbie (like I was 2 years ago) might read this thread and decide that it is too hard to do the harness, or that it is too much work, for him not to attempt it himself. FIEROFLYER NOV 19, 03:39 PM I at no time said or even suggested in any way that this is the only way to do a swap harness. I did state that this is how I do a swap harness and with many years of experience in wiring aircraft for both the Canadian Air Force and civilian aviation as a liscenced avionics tech I like to think I know atleast a little about wiring. With that all I have to say to the ones who can not help themselves when it comes to budding into things they know little or nothing about is go crawl back under a rock and keep telling your self your work is not the **** that it really is and leave people alone who are trying to help others by sharing their knowledge and time. For reasons of comfort and warmth I have brought the harness into the house and installed it onto my jig to finish. I have taped up the harness to the point where it feeds off the engine. On my jig I mount one PCM connector at a time and do one section of each connector at a time one wire at a time. Lenghtening or shortening as needed to keep the harness nice and cleanely run. In this case C2 clear connector is first as it is closest to the firewall when installed in the car.