I apologize in advance if this question has been asked already, I did look briefly and didn't see anything.

Since I bought my Firebird, I've found a few bugs in the wiring. This has prompted me to do a complete overhaul of the wiring within the cabin, and eventually in the engine bay. My questions are, I hope, pretty simple though, I also need opinions on a couple of things so let me get started:

1) Where is a good place to get primary wire at the best price?
2) How much of each color should I be getting? (I am replacing the current wires with the exact same colors for consistency, using a Chilton book as reference.)
3) I plan to use #10 for the entire cabin, is this sufficient or should I look to get #8?

This will be the first major job I'll have done on the car so I'm a bit nervous about it, I would like to be able to start with as much confidence as possible so any help is greatly appreciated.

Thank You
Corey

 

1. Couldn't say... I mostly just look for THE RIGHT THING. Considering that you only get, AT BEST, what you pay for, then if you set out DELIBERATELY trying to pay THE LEAST, you're going to get, AT BEST, .... you do the math.

2. Impossible to say... you'll need ALOT of red, orange, and black, in various gauges; not as much of the other colors.

3. Re-think that. While there are DEFINITELY some wires that could conceivably benefit from being #10, the vast majority of them don't carry anywhere near enough current to warrant that. In fact most of them only carry a few milliamps (thousandths of an amp), and then there's the problem of fitting such GINORMOUS wiring into the connectors you have available.

4. The question you didn't ask... what are you going to do about all those CONNECTORS? That's where about 90%, if not more, of the opportunity for improvement might lie. Since those are generally more expensive than wire, that tends to be where the corners got cut in the first place.

5. Even more fundamental: WHY are you doing this? What's wrong with what's there? What do you expect to accomplish? (i.e. how will you recognize "success"?) Why are you contemplating this sort of thing, instead of simply un-hacking whatever has been hacked before you got to it?

 

This is why I love this forum, we get to the real issues!

I would love to go through the car and un hack it, but by the time I was going wire by wire, I would have almost completely overhauled the wiring system in the car. The car has several shorts and just plain goofs in the wiring, right now there is a short in the cabin light/trunk hatch release that I haven't found yet, there was a short in the break light that I did manage to find and fix, there is a wire that is wrapped around the bottom of my shifter (can't be seen with the boot on) that I have no idea what it's intended purpose is, I've found multiple wires that went no where, and the brights switch probably has a short somewhere that I haven't found because there are wire caps attached to the wires around it that are melted. these are all the things I've found thus far and I would say that success is fixing these things as well as any others that I find along the way. Forgot to mention, the reverse lights don't work, the bulbs are good and I have no idea what's wrong with them. that could be transmission related though, from what I've been told.

What kind of connectors are you referring to? and what should I be doing about them?

I was going with #10 because I knew that I wouldn't need more anywhere inside the cabin, also for simplicity's sake. Also buying 100 ft of #10 for each color is cheaper than buying 10 ft rolls of every color/gauge

 

OK, so look at it this way:

There's what... a coupla hundred wires in the car? Iunno... quite a few, whatever the actual # is.

If you can't find and fix a few simple PO hack jobs like that, what makes you think that it's A Good Idea to try to build one from scratch without even so much as a schematic?

By your "location" in your profile, I'm suspecting that you've been well trained to choose your battles WISELY; only engage the enemy when you can win, avoid engagements you can't win, find and use every tactical advantage you can to your best advantage, remove or invalidate every possible advantage the enemy has, etc. Your "enemy" in this case is two-fold: first, a PO that if there was a license required before you could buy dykes, this wouldn't have happened; and, you don't know what's supposed to be there.

So by the principles you live by, the correct tactic is NOT, rip it out, throw it in the trash, and start over. Instead, it is: find what the PO sodomized, and put it back like it belongs. This is just not that hard. It's just a car, there's like a billion of em in the world and EVERY SINGLE ONE was mass-produced by a bunch of ignorant humans that had not the vaguest clue what they were doing besides collecting a paycheck, and if there's THAT many that succeeded with THAT level of lack of moronity on the production line then they can't be beyond human understanding, which means, if some OTHER human can understand it, YOU CAN TOO.

Try this: remove every single harness from the car FIRST. Take pictures, draw drawings, put on labels, put things in plastic bags, etc. etc. etc. so you can easily put it back. Lay it out on the ground. Like that, it'll be OBVIOUS which wires have been cut, where this yellow wire that's been cut used to be the same as that yellow wire over there that's been cut, etc. Be aware that some harnesses are part of something else, and may have to come out as part of that higher-level assembly; in particular, the harness behind the dash was installed onto the dash before the dash went into the car, and the dash needs to come out with the harness attached. But also be aware, the car was built on a production line, one step at a time, with what is called a "takt time" in manufacturing; and the takt time on most auto assy lines is in the range of 25 - 40 seconds. That's how long the car spends at each workstation. 32 seconds to put in the left seat; 32 seconds to put in the right seat; 32 seconds to put in the dash; 32 seconds to put in this, 32 seconds to put in that, 32 seconds 32 seconds 32 seconds. Which ALSO means, if YOU can figure out (or go visit an assembly plant and see) how the car was put together, YOU can have ANY part out and laying on the ground in .... how many seconds? and YOU can put it back in, in .... how many seconds? Seriously, this stuff is just not that hard.

 

I just parted out a 91 T/A. I have a lot of the wiring. PM me if you need something.

 

To finish the thought:

The ones on the end of EVERY SINGLE ONE of those wires.

Only one thing you CAN POSSIBLY do:

Replace em. Can't re-use em.

That's ALOT of connectors.

 

Theres the easiest solution. The dash harness isnt something you want to dive into. FYI, Modern engine harnesses use 32 different colors. Thats just the engine harness, not the rest of the car. I use waytek for the wire, but beware, you must purchase in 1000" rolls for anything other than solid colors

Check out mouser for the replacement connectors. Youll be a while tracking all of them down, then realizing most are discontinued. Next, check out how much a set of crimpers will set you back. Then see how limited their terminal range is and how many different types of terminals were used

Makes my head hurt just thinking about it. In short, replace it all with a good used harness from a similar year (90-92 V6, TBI, TPI all similar) OR go with simple XX circuit chassis harness from your favorite aftermarket mfr for a few hundred more