Hello - how difficult of a job is it to install a wiring harness in an 84 berlinetta with digital dash? It was removed along with the dash and the entire interior

 

Depends on what was done to it to get it out of the car that it was in, and what you did to your car to get the old one out of it.

If everything was just unplugged in reverse of what was done at the factory, then it just plugs right back in. OTOH if dykes were involved in either operation, then all bets are off.

You should go tour a vehicle assembly plant sometime. I highly recommend the Corvette plant in Bowling Green KY. You get to walk down the line and watch them put in carpet, wiring, seats, AC, glass, engines, brakes, fenders, dash, doors, ... IOW, assemble the car. Once you've seen the chunks that a car (pretty much ANY car really, they're all built very nearly exactly the same way... but as long as you're going to watch em build cars, might as well be cool ones, eh??) is put together in, it makes taking one apart at the points that it was designed to be put together, MUCH easier.

 

Please don't take this as a diss , because it's not , I do not know you or your skill level , BUT !!!! It's exactly that , YOUR skill level that will be the determining factor in just how hard it's gonna be .

And of course , like Sofa so rightly said , if dykes were involved , all bets are off .......

 

thanks for the responses.

OrangeBird, no offence at all - I have no skills in this area. I would plan to have someone do it who does.

Sofakingdom - follow up question - what do you mean by it depends on what was done to get it out? i doubt anything was labeled when it was removed if that's what you mean. Also, it would be going back into the same car it was removed from.

 

No, I was talking more about things like ... dykes. Sodomy, brutality, viciousness, hacking, impatience, cutting, tearing, haste, yanking, breaking... there are other things but those few should get the point across.

Did I mention dykes? Let's hope those weren't part of the disassembly "process".

Most of the connectors only go one way. (it WAS built on a production line, after all) So labelling is handy, as far as that goes, but by no means necessary.

If all you did was unplug stuff, then all ya gotta do now, is plug it back in.

The harness was part of the dash, originally. That is, when the factory worker who put dashes in had one roll up that needed that dash, all s/he did was, reach into THAT bin, pull one out, and plug it in. The harness was already ON THE DASH at that point. The harness included the fuse box and all the other connectors that plug into major sub-assemblies... HVAC, radio, and so forth. Obviously, that's how it should have been taken apart, and of course is how it should go back together now.

 

as sofa says look at the harness and see if the connectors are there vs the obvious cutting of the wire harness, ie cut through wires! if the connectors are there YOU can figure it out, that is how YOU get skills!!! if they were cut it could still be usable but that would require a lot more knowledge of harness repair

i would recommend you consider getting a real factory service manual from Helm, etc... they have full wiring diagrams, schematics, and connector identification. the great thing about 3rd gens is while certainly like everything else you need to have skills to do anything, the 3rd gen is pretty straightforward, lots of good documentation, and lots of great support on this forum... you can do a lot! good luck!

 

Hey guys, thanks for the comments. I took a look at it yesterday and the harness was just disconnected at the plugs and it appears that everything is still inside the dash board. I could see several large plugs hanging out the side of the dash. i don't think the wires were just cut since the owners intention was to reassemble it with the original equipment, so wiring part of the reassembly might be fairly easy. However it is completely torn down to the bare frameworks, so the degree to which it is disassembled is where the difficulty may come in. I imagine it would have to be assembled in a certain order...