Need help to wire which to which. Nothing came labeled and I can’t seem to follow the wires that go into the dash coming out of the firewall there’s 2 sets of wires that have been cut and idk what they are or where they go

This is from the fuse block

This is from the obd2 port and also the check engine light isn’t hooked up to anything but it’s wrapped around pink/black and black wires I’m assuming hook it up to those

From here down don’t know where they go or if they need to be cut I’m not running a/c and only have 2 front o2 sensors

 

Looks like yet another alarm/remote-start victim.
.

1. Purple wire looks like starter solenoid.
2. Looks 100% aftermarket, especially the LED indicator (not sure where you got the idea about "Check Engine"), with the possible exception of the pink.wht and brn/wht. Untwist it, remove everything that isn't connected to anything, re-take the photo if there's anything left.
3. Can't tell, doesn't look like anything factory I can put my finger on.
4. Doesn't look factory, would help if we could see where they're coming from. The cut wires up at the top look kinda like wiper motor but iunno.
5. Fan sw (between #6 & #8 spark plugs) if the wire is grn/wht; otherwise, knock sensor.
6. Radiator fan motor.
7. There's about a million of that plug in the car, would have to see the wire colors to be able to guess which one it is.
8. Looks like the transmission (TCC, 4th gear sw)

There should be a license required to buy a pair of dykes, and anybody caught with a pair without a license should be sentenced to hard time.

Make model & year would help. Maybe a little history to go along with it.

 

from 3 down all come from the car looks like they’ve been messed up pretty bad was wondering if I didn’t need them and to cut and tape them up the 1-2 is from the custom made harness service sent in stock harness that came with the engine they didn’t send instructions (2) those are all wires that aren’t connected and that are left the roped up wire goes to the obd2 port, green ,white, and the other wires that are twisted around them selves come out of the harness separately I’m guessing those are for the dash wires and I’ll need help knowing how to connect those (1) jus need to know the rest of the wires figured purple was for starter engine came out of 2000 Silverado 1500 ext cab the old beat up wires came with the car (idk if I’ve mentioned it I bought the car to get experience with cars but so far only ran into electrical problems) 1989 firebird from the paper under the hood was the 5.0l. If it comes down to it I’ll take out the interior wiring harness to know what’s going on

 

Sounds like you got sucked into somebody else's LSx swap project that they half-a$$ed up to a point and then discovered they were in over their head, and ran out of both money and intelligence. Not too unusual in a general way.

No you did not mention that about the experience and whatnot, but I sort of detected a certain amount of that scribbled in the white space all around your actual post.

First thing I'd suggest doing is getting a FSM for a 89 Firebird and a 2000 Silverado, since those 2 documents will have the wiring diagrams for (a) the car and (b) the motor.

Next thing would be to try to identify whose swap harness it is, and contact them and get their schematics or instructions or documentation or whatever else they can offer.

Next thing would be, tow that thing to the quarter car wash, and CLEAN IT UP. It's amazing how much less of a forking drag it is to work on a fornicated car, if AT LEAST you don't end up having to take a shower every time you touch it.

After that, DO NOT cut ANYTHING, until such time as you KNOW WHAT IT IS. See the comment I made earlier about "dykes". You don't want to end up THERE, like in a [michaelbolton] "federal pound me in the a** prison" [/michaelbolton], now do you??

 

ngl I thought it was just a comment and didn’t think you could actually go to jail for that lol it looks like it comes from lt1 swap I’ve looked up to see how much it resembles it and it’s pretty darn close. I have the Haynes manual for 82-92 firebirds all models and figured I could go off of painless performances instructions to try and hook it up. Ik I’m like way over my head on this to but I’m eager and determined to learn and experience so I’ll have the knowledge to avoid and to take head on in my next project but would the idea of taking out the interior wires and putting a new one in be a good one? I feel like that’s be less complicated but more time consuming but it’s a good sacrifice in my opinion

 

Haynes is worthless for the topic in question. Get the FSM both for the car and for the motor (vehicle it came out of). It pops up on fleabay from time to time, usually on CD, which is fine.

No you can't "go off of" Painless' instructions, unless your harness came from Painless. Which of course, it might have; but best to be SURE before committing. As the carpenters say, "measure twice, cut once", … with wires it's kinda similar, except you DO NOT want to cut ANYTHING until you know FOR ABSOLUTELY SURE that it's too long. NOT, as the people who should go to federal pound me in the a** prison would do, their first response to wires they don't understand is to cut them. DO NOT become one of THEM.

I hope for your sake that you're not stuck with a LT1 swap. There are few more "fragile" arrangements in the world. Not that the LT1 is "bad"; not that "you shouldn't do it", not that "you're efffed give it up now", not "sell it", NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT. Please, no one, put words into my keyboard: I DID NOT say any of those things. Only, that the LT1 is not A Good Idea if you're looking toward The Future. There never were very many of them in the world to begin with, and it's one of those things (kinda like the early computer-controlled carbs in this way) where they took the available existing technology of the day and tried to stretch it to the utmost. AT THE TIME, it was a DAMN GOOD motor. At the time, it was ALL THEY COULD DO to make it work, in a BRAND NEW car. Taking an antique one (by definition, they now are... "antique" in most places is 25 yrs old or more, and the LT1 dates to 1991, which makes it near 30 yrs now) and putting it into an EVEN MORE ANTIQUE car, is just not a recipe for high-probability success.

Regardless, GET THE DOCUMENTATION for whatever all it may be that you've got, and THEN AND ONLY THEN, whup out yer dykes. DO NOT CUT ANYTHING. There are few eeeeeezier ways available to put yerself into a level of Hell you can't climb back out of even by spending however many centuries in Purgatory, than cutting wires you don't know what they are.

 

for sure I’ll get to working on it tmw it’s too dark out. You got any thing else to point me in the right direction? Well ik I can get most of it connected there will be a few things I’ll need to know where they go but I jus wanted to know which ones were dash wires and where they hook up too and what wires were on the fuse block and where they go and the remaining wires will be dealt with somehow. Is there a machine or computer or something I can clip these wires to and it’ll tell the machine what wires they are?? It seems possible but a little too expensive if you know what I mean Haynes is really vague and just expects you to know what they mean by a few words however there are a few things in there that are useful

 

If you get the service manual you can trace the wires out. There is no machine that will tell you what they are, only a multimeter can tell you what they do, tracing them out is much easier. Or just get another harness from someone that hasn't cut the ever living crap out of it for your year car

 

last time I tried doing that I got a bundled up set of wires that can’t even be untangled and would that multimeter be better for what I’m talking about? So that way I can decide if I don’t need them or where they go to so I can hook them up?

 

FSM = Factory Service Manual

Get one. (or 2... since you have stuff from 2 vehicles) A multimeter can only tell you WHAT'S THERE, but won't tell you a thing about WHERE IT NEEDS TO GO. Kinda like... imagine... you're at 89°59'45"N 35°08'07" W and want to get to … 44.940376 1.009671 … but you have no database that tells you what roads go where, what their names are, what buildings are on the way, where some address is, … THAT'S what a FSM will give you. A multimeter tells you WHAT'S THERE, a factory service manual tells you WHAT IT DOES.

Be patient. You're not going to post on the Interwebz and somebody is just going to be able to tell you what some unknown g00b did to your poor car. Doesn't work like that. Gotta figure out what was there originally, what was added, and what whatever moron had it before you, EFFFFFFED UP along the way, that made her/him decide to sell it to you CHEEEEEEEEEEP. You're NOT getting a whole ready to drive, all put together, perfected … result, you're diving into the middle of a FAILED PROJECT that was started, and EFFFFFED UP, by somebody that didn't know what they were doing. Slow down a bit and realize that this is gonna take a bit of effort and research and maybe acquiring some whole new skillz on your part.

 

ok so by buying both fsms I can be able to do what I need to? It’s not anything too “effed” up it’s just wires I had family that knows cars pretty darn well I’m more than sure it’s just the wiring that needs some fixing and replacing but ok thanks for the info it’s helping me get closer to being done

 

If wires are cut, it's efffed up, by definition. You're in the situation where you need to figure out what they cut off, what it's supposed to hook to, what whoever built the swapper harness had in mind, whether it's even the right harness for the particular motor you have (different sensors and things are in different places on various iterations of the LSx motors), and so forth. None of us out here are going to be able to just look at what you've got and tell you which wires go where. It's not like somebody else has been in the EXACT same position with the EXACT same parts in the EXACT same condition as yours and has it all written down to just hand to you. For example, NONE of your car's gauges except for the speedo, are tied into the ECM; but ALL of them in a LSx vehicle are. In those, the sensors hook to the ECM, and the ECM sends a data stream to the dash cluster, which decodes the data and works the stepper motors that the "pointer" of each gauge is attached to; whereas in your car, there's an individual wire that goes from each sending unit in the motor directly to the gauge, which is analog and NOT a stepper motor, and there's no tie-in to the ECM whatsoever. Totally incompatible at a very basic level. Your swap harness likely is involved with that sort of thing. They're all DIFFERENT and INDIVIDUAL, according to how the person(s) who designed it, intended it to be done.

The act of dropping the motor into the car and bolting it up isn't too terribly much of an ordeal; granted there are some technicalities, but your family members that know cars in general can surely help you out there. It's all that cut (aka damaged, destroyed) electrical stuff, as well as the ins and outs of mating the 2 harnesses, that needs detailed info. The 2 FSMs will give you the wire identification, purpose, destination, etc. for each factory harness (the car one and the motor one) that you're trying to marry, and then once you identify who built the swap thing, where all of that is intended to go.

I would also add that you're very likely going to have to do a bunch of repairing, apart from the swap function; for example the 1-pin fan sw or knock sensor connector and the 4-pin transmission connector you have are broken. Whether either of them are going to end up being actually used (the fan sw will have to be, the KS probably won't, the transmission one will depend on whether you're keeping the 700 or putting in a 4L60E since you haven't told us that, and so on) is something no one out here can know. All of the connector parts - pins, connector bodies, the little silicone rubber seals, etc. etc. etc. - are available from Mouser, an electrical distributor, as well as any number of car wiring harness people. They'll cost ALOT less from Mouser but you'll have to do all the hard work of identifying what you need, making sure you get the right # of all the pieces, and so forth, whereas the people that build harnesses for a living will have already done that and may well have a "kit" or "pigtail" for each thing you need, and will charge you accordingly for their effort and knowledge. That's a tradeoff (cost vs risk & effort) you'll have to decide which side you want to be on. You'll likely need wire as well, which you can either just go to yer local buzzard nest and get harnesses out of destroyed cars to provide wire to match all the varieties you'll need, or buy new which is very hard to get all the right colors, stripes, gauges, etc.

You're going to learn ALOT about automotive electrical systems before your car drives again, I can assure you of that.

 

4l60e is in it. I get both factory manuals and they can help me connect what I need to connect? And then from there find out how to connect it? Right? And also for the fan sw wouldn’t that be for the fans on the radiator? I didn’t know if I wanted to run an electric one or put the one on the motor

 

Right, to a point: the 2 factory manuals will tell you what the wires in each harness are for. They will NOT tell you what to connect to what, in just exactly those terms. They will NOT tell you what your swap harness is or how it's supposed to hook up. That's the 3rd thing you'll need to get, is the instructions from whoever built that. For example, you need to figure out if they intended for your tuner to delete the dash and gauge function from your ECM altogether and adapt "classic" sending units into the engine in place of the LSx ones and hook them up to your existing gauges, or if they intended you to replace your existing cluster with a LSx one, or what. We out here have no way of knowing that kind of thing.

Or, ditch it altogether, and start fresh. Which it might be too late for, depending on how much "improvement" the factory harnesses you have, have enjoyed. All of that is the kind of research you HAVE TO do.

You want to run an electric radiator fan, not belt-driven. It's about a 15 HP and acoupla miles per gallon difference, besides a whole bunch less of mechanical hassle like getting a shroud and a fan to fit together right. In a LSx vehicle, that fan (those fans, actually... there's usually 2 of em) are completely under the control of the ECM. But that requires wiring and relays, and we out here have no idea whether what you have includes any of that. But you can probably continue to run your existing electric fan, somehow, if whatever swap harness you have supports it, of if you can adapt it as necessary.

 

it doesn’t have an ecm with it I could use the old one that hasn’t been touched or tuned but I was gonna buy one from painless cause vats is already deleted. And I’m sure I could find a way to throw some relays and wires onto my fuse block, id like to keep stock gauges I really would. And if starting fresh will make this easier I can start with the wires on the interior I think I needed to take it all out anyways cause my steering wheel is wobbly. But they installed a glass breaker and other kinds of alarm systems that I had pulled out (I didn’t cut nothing they were connected to a box in the engine bay which in turn were connected to the headlights)

 

Wow, you really do have a mongrel there...

People BASICALLY NEVER attempt to use the early 80s ECM that comes in these cars with a LSx swap. I would say "never" but there might be someone somewhere sometime that went that route. The other 99.9999% of people use either the stock LSx ECM (0411 usually) or a total aftermarket one.

I don't think you can "throw" relays onto your fuse block, at least not as a matter of intentional policy, before trying it.

The stock LSx ECMs are easy to come up with and very little $$$. Most likely that's what was intended for your project. Look for 2 long connectors, maybe one with a green shroud and one with a blue; those would be the ones that plug into the ECM.

Here's a writeup of something along those lines on another forum. You can get some idea of the parts involved, wire colors, tuning, what some of the connectors look like, etc. that goes with it. https://www.performancetrucks.net/fo...-chevy-484892/ Not saying that this is "exactly" what you'll have, or need, but should give you a kind of starting point idea.

I can also tell you, those truck accessories aren't likely to fit under your hood very well; especially not if your car is a Firebird.

What car do you have? What motor? (if you don't know that, post up a pic of the whole thing, it might be possible to identify it; looks like 99 - 06 truck of some sort, but there's variety within that category that isn't in your photos) How much of the motor harness came with it? Keep in mind, it's obviously a truck one, there's like A BILLION of those trucks in junkyards, you can go get a whole other harness and start fresh if you need to, on that end. The car one, is a little tougher; there's ALOT more variation in those from one model and year to another, and NOWHERE NEAR as many of em laying around in good enough condition to re-use as-is.

 

I would add also, to fix a wobbly steering wheel, you don't need to take much of anything out, as far as wiring.

If you want to keep your stock gauges, best thing to do is probably to get rid of the stock ECM altogether, use the 0411, and use adapters or whatever to add the appropriate sending units to the motor, while leaving the ones that came with it in place. All you need is the temp and OP senders on the motor. I think there's a box you can buy that takes a signal from the 0411 and gives an output that can drive an old style tach. Same for the speedo.

Since your car had already been sodomized with that remote-start/alarm thing, that damage will have to be repaired, no matter what. But there's no way for any of us out here to know what kind of a hack-job your car was victimized with during that process, either. You'll have to dig all that out yourself, since every one of those things is different, and every "installer" seems to hack up cars differently.

What you're doing here - swapping a LSx motor into an older car - is VERY common nowadays, and VERY familiar. Lots of parts, wiring, etc. are available to make it work; practically ANY LSx motor into practically ANY older vehicle. There's no way for us out here to know how much, if any, of that you already have, besides a motor and a (heavily fornicated) car. But it's not as simple as posting up a photo of a bunch of sodomized wiring and asking what hooks to what; there's more to it than that. There's also a sub-forum on here about such swaps that has LOTS of detailed info about various routes people have taken to put this swap into effect. Better to read, read, read, read everything that's already been posted there, than to ask to be spoon-fed here. You'll get a lot better results that way.

 

not sure what you mean by what I have but here’s pics of both motor and car





Here’s what happened when I tried doing this on my own so I bought a fresh one and sent it in

Not relative but you’ve been giving me good info I wanted to switch this to mechanical cause after all this wiring I don’t want to mess with any more of it

 

Ummmm… yeah.

I can see the accessories don't really "fit". Somebody cut the hood support out to clear the alt. Hopefully that won't come back to bite you although I kinda think it might sooner or later.

Looks like a 99 - 02 (I think) motor. Cable-drive throttle body. Not drive-by-wire which is (I think) 03 up. You have the blue & red ECM connectors, not the blue & green. (I have a 04 Avalanche, and a 06 Escalade motor for it; both of those harnesses are DBW and have the blue & green connectors) You have some ECM or other there, not sure if it's the "right" one for your harness or not, probably is but who knows, but you can easily enough take care of that. Go to the junkyard and get an ECM that takes the blue & red connectors, which I'm almost positive any 99-02 truck will; best to get the newest possible one of course (02). Very few $$$ in exchange for the peace of mind. I'm gonna guess then that the bird's nest of wire is the "old" harness, and the one with the blue & red connectors is the "new" one.

The way the trucks are built is, there are 3 large connectors that plug into the bottom of the fuse box under the hood. Each one is kind of square and flat and has a screw in the middle of it. You can see them in that electric fan article I linked you to, one of the first few photos: there's a green, a black and a white one. Of the 3, 1 goes to the engine, I think the black one but I could be wrong. It provides power for the fans, O2 sensors, ECM, ignition, fuel pump, etc. etc. etc.; quite a few individual power feeds. Has the starter relay too; the starter wire coming from your interior would hook up to that relay which the 02 truck FSM will show you which wire it is. I think what you have in your hand in that photo of the bird's nest might be the connector that plugs into the bottom of the truck fusebox. To hook that up to your car, you would need to provide a fusebox (duh) that those wires can all plug into. Wouldn't surprise me one bit if the eeeeeziest possible way to get that would be to go to the junkyard and get a 99-02 truck fusebox and trim it down to just the parts you need. At that point, you'd need to hook up battery, ignition, and the starter to it, and that would power the whole motor and everything associated with it including the ECM. A typical "swap" harness might include some substitute for that, that the wires going to things related to the motor would hook up to.

The truck fusebox includes a bunch of relays for various things. SInce a 99-02 truck didn't have electric fans, you'd need to follow that article to install them, since your situation is EXACTLY the same as someone with one of those trucks. I HIGHLY STRONGLY HEAVILY recommend electric fans: they are superior IN EVERY WAY to mechanical ones. Worth the effort. I put a set of 06 or 07 ones in my 04 Avalanche, which came with a clutch fan, and EVERYTHING about it is better: the AC works better, the engine stays cooler especially idling on hot days with the AC on, the gas mileage went up, the noise went down, the power went up NOTICEABLY especially at higher RPMs. All positives, NO negatives about it at all. IMO it would be bald-faced STOOOPID to put a mech fan on while doing this swap. Pretty sure a 4th gen fan setup will slap right into your car and the truck harness like in that article will plug right in but I could be wrong. You can buy an ENTIRE BRAND NEW one for something in the $130 range; probably less than you'd spend hacking a mech one on.

Not sure why you put a pic of the hatch pull-down in there; I don't see anything wrong with that. The motor might be bad or whatever but that's totally unrelated to getting the engine to run.

If memory serves, the earlier trucks had the pressure regulator mounted on the fuel rails, and a return line. Later trucks had the regulator mounted at the pump, on top of the tank, and no return line. I'm not positive what you will have to do about the fuel system; whether for example you could use a stock TPI fuel tank & pump and just hook it up, or if you'd need a LS1 F-body tank, or what.

Not that it matters as far as the swap, but which is that: a 4.8, a 5.3 or a 6.0?

 

5.3, and I asked some one they said looks like return style but I think stock tank is in it and fuel pump and everything else might be stock I’m not sure I haven’t pulled down the rear end to see if it’ll need a new one. Here’s pics tho you might get an idea of what it actually is and yes I still have the old giant truck fuseblock and the c2 block from the fuseblock in the first pic about the wires it was made to only run those 3 wires with only a 4x2 fuse block with 2 relay blocks attached like as lt1swaps shows how to do it so there’s good enough reason to believe it’s been done like lt1swap and I’ve looked on the website haven’t cyphered any info yet as to what I was originally looking for. The thing about cutting it for the alt.. I hope I don’t run into problems with it I’d like to keep the hood.. would a different belt setup work? Or too little room? And 2 of the lines run to a master brake cylinder which is kinda confusing me cause they all run to the fuel tank

 

And not that it won’t matter but I planned on doing a FRESH swap in a 94 s10 blazer but that was more ‘effed’ up than the firebird (everything in the blazer basically needed to be replaced at least the firebird needed a few things to be running and a few other things to drive) the only benefit would be that we know what was going on and to go a route that’s obviously the right way to do it with making few to none shortcuts that won’t mess me over in the end result in my opinion this mess up of a gorgeous car will teach me how to do it and better than whoever doesn’t know how to do it and messed up

 

I realized I won’t be able to use my stock gauges if I want to make this even less complicated than it already is.. what LSx gauges do you recommend?

 

You can use all your stock gauges with an LSx swap. The speedo and tach come from the LS ECM, the oil and water temp come from external sensors that don't go to the ECM. For the speedo you connect to the output on the ECM to the inside of your car, for the tach you connect from the ECM to the tach wire to the tach lead on the body harness.

If you read the swap guide on the sub forum it will really answer a lot of your questions. sofa has been way more patient and helpful than I would be. He is very knowledgeable and I didn't want to point out his error on the ECM sending all the signals to the dash, but I have a base model Firebird and I have all my factory gauges working with the LS swap.
For the temp, if your current harness doesn't have a 3 pin temp connection, you can just get a temp sender for a 99-02 Camaro or Firebird and get the 2 terminal connector and splice that to your body side harness. The oil pressure gauge sender for a 99-02 F-body will also work to run the factory gauge, and the connector from the body side should plug into it.

 

well my main question is where are the wires that plug into the speedo and tach wires? Cause if I’m right they’ve been controlled by an inside computer that runs all the lights, radio, heater/ac, windows, etc. and he told me it’s be easer for me to look in the fsm for both vehicles and trace them out and find them. And yes he has been helpful I do thank him a lot

 

No, the LS ECM has nothing to do with interior anything, and neither does the ECM in your 89.

I suggest you read the swap guide in this sub forum before you ask more questions. Or go to LT1swap.com and get the LS info you need there, while getting a factory manual off ebay. Unfortunately the used manuals for 89 birds are stupid expensive for the reason that the people selling old ones think they are gold plated. I finally picked up an 89 manual for around $60 shipped, wereas the other years are usually in the $30 range shipped.

I can help you directly, but you should to do your own research first, all your questions have really been answered here in some part at some time in the past. I got most of my knowledge about these cars here, by reading, then reading some more, then reading even more.

 

maybe I’ve been vague about my question.. I’ve been reading since before I started wiring and it’s hard to understand what goes where and how it’s supposed to connect to each other like do I cut the gauge wires from where it connects into the cluster and connect them to the harness? Or cut them from the bcm and same thing? Or where would the C100 connector connect to Inside the car or vise versa? Do the gauge wires get put into the C100 connector? How does the gauges connect to the engine harness

 

There is no BCM in these cars.

I had a reply typed out, but I will refrain from commenting anymore. By your replies I don't think this is a job you should try to tackle on your own.

 

NO YOU DO NOT CUT!!!! Whatever you do, DO NOT CUT ANYTHING!!!!

Wires don't grow back. Once you cut, it's FINAL. DON'T do that until you are ABSOLUTLEY POSITIVELY 100% IRREVOCABLY CERTAIN that it's the right thing to do. DO NOT start out on a swap project with the question "what do I cut". The answer is and always has been and will remain forever until the end of time, NOTHING.

Do your research FIRST. Read the LSx swap sub-forum, wherein about 99% of all your questions are already answered. Read read read read read read read read read study study study study study then read and study some more, then if there's something that hasn't ALREADY been covered or you don't understand, start asking questions. Spend lots of time on the LS1tech.com and performancetrucks.net forums. Those are places where people that know these things hang out. Don't even bother registering at first; that'll just lead to the temptation to post stuff that doesn't need to be posted; just read read read read read read read read study study study study study then read and study some more. Use your "receiver" (eyes and ears) instead of your "transmitter" (mouth and keyboard).

In the meantime, DO NOT CUT ANYTHING. Save cutting for THE VERY LAST THING YOU DO, after you already have everything known and learned and bought and identified and measured and assembled and decided and laying out neatly and visibly in front of you. The VERY LAST THING you will do AFTER ALL THAT, is to cut things.

You will spend AT LEAST 5 times MORE in repairing mistakes, than what the FSM will cost you. The reason people charge like it's gold is because IT IS gold. There is NOTHING in the world that is as valuable to your project as that book/CD. Mortgage your house if you have to; but if you want to finish this swap, BUY IT. Otherwise you'll end up mortgaging your house ANYWAY to pay for all the stuff you ruin or buy 2 or 3 times along the way because you did something you shouldn't have.

 

I have the same issue with the tune port I just bought! Fortunately, I bought it with the understanding that I would more than likely just swap the harnesses (to include under the dash) but I really appreciate Sofakingdom's comment!

"There should be a license required to buy a pair of dykes, and anybody caught with a pair without a license should be sentenced to hard time."