Oh, no. A wiring harness hacker was here!

Good thing my motor isn't done yet.

Since I had a little more time to get the car ready, and there was no motor in it when I bought it, I decided to take everything out from under the hood to repaint it under there.

As it turns out, the wiring harness that had been "all straightened out" by the previous owner is a serious "rig!"

For example: there is a wire spliced into the hot wire for the neutral safety switch. It goes from there, through a hole in the firewall to the wiper switch, and back through the firewall to the wiper motor. I'm guessing the factory wiper wiring was toast.

Also (see pics) the bulkhead connection for the ammeter wire looks melted, and the wire terminal was replaced with a GM style terminal. The wire with the GM terminal was about 4 inches long, stripped down about 1-1/2 inches and wrapped around the Mopar wire...with no tape or anything! Both wires are green with corrosion, and the insulation has been hardened by heat to the point that it cracks off in chunks. A disaster ready to happen!

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There are no less than three flasher units under the dash. I always thought there would be one, possibly two with one for the turn signals and one for the four-ways..but three?

All in all, the entire under-dash harness apears to be a hacked up mess, as well as much of the under-hood harness, and the bulkhead connector is junk.

I guess I should be glad I found it now, with the motor out and everything a little more accessable, but it's pretty dissapointing.

I'm taking sugestions for the best wiring sources; I know there's Painless, Year One, etc. Who's the best?

the last words of that hacker musta been,"Yeah I know how to install a car stereo system"

I can't remember the source that Year One gets their wiring harnesess from, but here is one to consider for other than under the dash....http://evanswiring.tripod.com/index.html.... There are also upgrades available to bypass the inherant flaw that is caused by Mopar using an amp gauge. There is a company that can explain that in detail floating around out there too. Several magazines have done articles on it to. It may even be in the Tech archives here. Hopefully someone will chime in with the names of those companies. I am currently suffering from a case of C.R.S. due to lack of sleep.

Thanks for the input!

Yeah, the car stereo thing is right on. They cut holes for the speakers in the kick panels and, even worse, in the hatchback carpeted area. I'll eventually remove them, as I'll probably just put a cheap non-functional thumbwheel in the dash to fill the hole...once I get a new dash bezel that isn't hacked in half for a CD player. Stupid!

The Autometer tach that came with the car was mounted on top of the dash...they poked out a hole in the factory dash speaker grille metal to shove the wires through the factory speaker, then drilled 3 holes in the dash metal for a flimsy piece of steel. The only wire that wasn't loose was the tach lead to the MSD box, and it was poked through a small hole that had been drilled in the firewall with no protection for the wire. And there was an empty hole with a grommet an inch away. Go figure! Anyway, I'm mounting the tach and a matching speedo in the large holes in the instrument cluster, so I'll have to do something to fix the carnage.

With the proper wire terminals, I think I can replace the hacked up wires between the steering column coupler and the fusebox fairly easily. I'll need a new bulkhead (both sides), bulkhead terminals, and will probably go ahead and do the headlight relay upgrade and eliminate the amp guage while I'm in there. Might as well go for it and wire it up for a Toyota alternator while I'm at it, too.

A replacement harness would probably be kind of useless with all the intended changes, MSD box, replacing all factory guages with aftermarket mechanical guages, etc.

Looks like I'll be busy for a while...

hope you got the car for a decent price

After the Valiant I had with Christmas lights spliced into the dash harness, nuthin' surprises me anymore.

Shoulda seen me just about roll out of the car at almost 50MPH the first time I drove it at night and all those lights started blinking...........