Here the deal, I have a wiring harness that is cut in half. Dont ask. I dont wish to spend $800 for a new one. The wires are a clean cut. What is the best way to repair the wires. Ive herd that I could use just regular connectors. Though, I had a guy who works on Toyotas that I needed to sauder them together. For voltage reasons. Anyway, there is about 15 wires that need to be reconnected. Any tips or tricks to make this fix go easier and be fixed right would be helpful.

 

Unless you want to be plagued with electrical and drivability problems, you'd best solder the wires.

Easy or right. Pick one, because you're not going to get both. But if you're serious about getting advice on doing it right then:

1- Use solder. Heat the wire then let it wick the solder in.
2- Use shrink tubing. Remember to slip it on before making the connection.
3- Use flux paste. It makes the soldering process easier and keeps the connections clean and contaminate free.
4- Use the correct color wiring is you have to splice any in.
6- Recover any wires with looming. Seeing an unprotected wire in an engine bay is a bad thing.
7- Get good at figuring out the wiring diagrams.

 

Thanks for the reply. Should I be able to trust the wires, they are all color coated?

 

from looking at my cut computer harness i took out there are a few wires the same colors as others. so i wouldnt but if they are all different on one side and the same,so they match up evenly, then i would say so.

 

The best way to attack this is to set the harness out in a large work area and head to the parts store. You'll need the following:
1. A haynes or Chiltons to refer to the wiring diagram
2. A good crimping kit with a hell of a lot of splices( not a kit that has a wire striper tool with it, you need and industrial style criper from an electronics store or from home depot)
3. A good amount of enviromental shrink wrap(get it at home depot. make sure you get the size that looks just a little larger than 2x the wire width so that the shrinking will seal it properly. (Or if you want to look really hard, you can find enviromental spilces, they are usually clear with a red ring, these can be used to splice and then be heated to seal.)
a. these things shouldn't be hard to find, but a little expensive. But it is another tool to put in the box and a useull one at that!
4. A package of zip-ties
5. A Heat gun(Or hairdryer)
6. DO NOT use the following at any time: Electrical tape, glue, butter-fly plugs(like the ones you find on wall outlets), or any "repair kits". These all will give you so-so results and will most likly fail in a bad storm or other uncontrolable enviroments.

The only reason that you want to use crimping instead of solder, is that with solder you have to half-*** the sealing job. This way you can have a nice clean finish that won't be affected by the weather or other fluids.

Your next step once you have all that is to cut away any tape or wraping on the wires near the cut. Then comes the tricky part, when the bundle was cut, I assume it was straight and the wires were cut at the same spot. This will cause a problem, becouse when your all done, you'll have a whole fist full of wire connections. What you will need to do is spread the connection points allong the bundle. or you can deal with a ball of splices and hide it somewhere! If you are going to spread it out you will need a good length or wire that is the same guage. (Look on the wire that is there and the guage is the first numbers in front of the (/) ex. **/2164-29 where the * is the guage, and it will almost always be an even number) YOur next step is to fan the wires on an angle. In other words, cut both ends or the bundle while lying flat at about a 45 degree angle making sure that when you cut the other sideit is totaly opposite, the corisponding wire is cut at a length making up the loss. so it would look like this if it were only 4 wires:

red-------------------Splice---------------------------------------------red
blue---------------------------Splice------------------------------------blue green----------------------------------Splice---------------------------green
black---------------------------------------------Splice--------splice--black

And so on. The only problem is that you loose a little wire length. This can be ignored or fixed with more splices just after the bundle repair like the 4th wire shows. with the wire piece in the middle made up of the wire you bought. Some may say this is dumb or goes against the purpose, but it's the only way to avoid a big headache when somthing turns up wrong.

The only thing left is to seal every thing over with shrink wrap one last timewith a larger diameter piece to seal everything over just to be safe. then from there you can dress everything up nice with zipties and fasten it all down.

This was a crash course in wire repair, but I hope it was clear enough for you to understand it all. If not, e-mail me at Mintondm@mfr.usmc.mil and I'll break it down more. Good luck!

 

thanks thehurtwithin for the tips. im going to be fixing it in the next two weeks. ill let you guys know how its going.

 

The "right" way that I was outlining was per a GM service manual. I don't see how you can "half-***" the sealing job. I know that my repairs look 10X better than any crimp splice could ever look, especially in a 15 wire bundle.

 

Are we allowed to ask then?
Why was it cut in half?!

Andy.

 

I bought a '89 TTA engine. I drove from Georgia to New Jersey to get it. I didnt know about the harness untill I got there. I had been looking a while for the engine and had drove a while to get there. I wasnt about to say, "eh, I dont think so". Now I have a TTA with a cut wirining harness. The guy said the guys who pulled it did it.

 

Definitely solder the wires. Takes a little more time but looks and works better in the end. Heat shrink to keep the weather out. Wire loom for looks. Your engine compartment will thank you.

 

Aww something I do know about..

Crimp. If you want it to be reliable then crimping is the only way. When satellites get assembled.. wiring harnesses are never soldered as the changes from cold to hot and back and forth will cause the solder to become brittle and in a short time it will fail. You will find that billion dollar satellites will NEVER have a wiring harness soldered.. if Boeing soldered instead of crimping.. they would be out of the satellite market in a heart beat. If billion dollar satellites use crimping because its more reliable.. I can bet you that a little 3 grand engine would also be better off.

Sure the temps in space are cold but most satellites I work with will have internal temps of around -10c - 5c. Solar radiation keeps it warm but the constant changes in temp will destroy a solder joint.

You can.. but it wont really make a diffrence.. crimp and then solder but this would be wasting time. One thing forsure is no matter what you do.. make sure you weatherproof all connections. I crimp.. then use some KY jelly then heat srink around the crimp.

Good luck.. Tim