Another question...

What a re people's thoughts on running the engine loom through the tunnel? I am thinking of making a hole inside, just above where the centre mount of console sits.

There seemed to be plenty of room between the tunnel and top of bellhousing when engine was fitted.

The heat would be no worse than where it's normally run??

I didn’t do too much Sunday, only worked a couple of hours. Had to spend some QT with the missus

Mounted up the water/meth injection pump. A simple job, that actually took about 2 hours. One of the rivnuts I was using kept coming out, so it was a bit of a stuff around. Mounted the pump in front of front passenger side wheel.






Today was when the pain started….in both my back from leaning over all day soldering/moving wires and my brain…

I was in 2 minds early on about how I was going to get the engine bay loom – to the engine – and stay hidden. I thought I’d start by moving what I didn’t need back towards the ECU plug (through the grommet), and deleting what I could.

As I went on, I decided I’d move all engine plugs back through as well (and ended up chopping off grommet). It was a bit of a pain, as certain wires are joined and spliced within the loom itself, as well as being inter-twined amongst one another. Makes for a painful job when trying to move stuff around – cutting/soldering/joining…

Anyway, some pics – in order of throughout the day







Headache material:


You can see the ECU plug on the LHS, the (new) engine loom to the lower part of pic,above is the grommet (to show the section going back into guards, towards front of car) with minimal wiring there now – included the relocated coil wires which will go the MSD Digital 6 box and MAF wires – which will be extended along here, then running across front to driver side near the air intake pipe.



Since I didn’t have the forethought at the time of stripping the NL fairlane, I knew I needed some brackets to fit the dash up. Luckily, a good bloke in Perth hooked me up from his old wreck with the brackets I needed. I took a timeout from the wiring and fitted up the centre mounting bracket for the dash. I am pretty thankful at how easy this was, with Ford putting bolts in the right places for me!!…pics explain…







As you can see, I installed my old XH heaterbox. I did this to check clearance near tunnel bracket, as I am now leaning towards running the engine loom through a hole here… There I enough room slightly off-centre towards passenger side.




Thoughts on me making a hole here? There is plenty of room between tunnel and bellhousing… My only concern is heat? Surely it won’t be too much more significant than where the loom normally runs?

Any objections? It’s a little late now as I’ve already re-done the loom to suit! Far less joining/splicing for me as well if I do it this way – it should reach without extending…

Nice work on the wiring, I know the pain of removing wires that ford joined in the loom, and soldering those big wires is hard work too. I fit a EF type plug in fuse link setup to my EB after my original EB setup had a melt down. The wiring was rather hard to solder, and due to not knowing how it would sit, I left way too much extra length.

Still have not gotten around to tidying it up, so kudos to you for the neat wiring your doing!

Cheers

ToranaGuy

So long there's some decent clearance, can't see a huge problem near heat areas - tape the wiring and run that corrugated conduit over it. Near exhausts and such heatshields would be a good addition.

When the car is running again, just inspect those areas from time to time, to make sure no hassles long term.
Usually for soldering, I keep a 30W and 80W iron - obviously for small wiring and larger.

Don't forget to put your thinking cap on to retain wiring for future addons - PITA to add extra later.
e.g. These cars look good with the Fairlane inst cluster - particularly with full setup - door ajar, bulb out - and us elitists, fuelflap ajar/release.

snap, good thinking. will do. any ideas on my questions a few posts back regarding the black/green earth and tan/yellow power?

Should be able to leave them disconnected - from memory when I fitted the later Bosch ABS to the earlier looms, I just tied the respective power and earth lines together - earth was WRT to the frame.

Ok, no worries.

I was going to 'steal' the tan/yellow and supply power to the MSD from that.

Would it harm anything if I did join the black/green to the black wire on the plug (so pretty much grounding it).

I just dont want any earthing problems after its all back together.

What happens on non-abs models? Is there no 2-pin plug in Front Left corner as there is with this Fairlane loom?

Should be okay. Test the earth wires to frame - should be dead short.
My XH didn't have ABS originally, did have the earlier unit power supply plug (4 wires).

No worries, will do.

I'm at work this week, so I'll have to let you know how it goes next week! Cheers for the advice

Didn’t achieve too much today… couldn’t be bothered doing any wiring, so tried to look into the dash fitment.

I fit the dash up, and it was actually quite freakish how easily it bolted up. Very weird!! Had to cut the little plastic tabs off the top part of dash mount. 2 out of 5 holes matched straight up to the holes under windscreen. My centre tunnel bracket worked perfectly, and I just cut the standard XH side mounts and drilled new holes in em. The doors are a tight close, but they’ll be ok.

I still have to idea how on earth I’m ganna get the demister to work. So tempted to pay it off completely. There is no room at the top to feed air through. I’ll have to make holes somewhere… :/







After that, I turned my attention to getting the heaterbox ready. Had to come up with a way to make the blend motor fit under plenum. It really wasn’t my day today – I didn’t realise there was a release clip inside the door lever hole thing (hard to explain, but those who have removed it will know what I mean) – so I tried to pull it straight off and broke it!! So F%$#ing annoyed – then had to pull the whole thing apart…




Wasn’t such a bad things, as I got to figure out how it actually works. Im pretty sure the previous owner of the fairlane has a bird living inside the heater box. Heaps of leaves and crap inside. The air con condenser also looks worse for wear, so I decided to pull my XH one apart as well (and swap bits over, as well as the broken bit).

After that – I soon figured out why my radiator coolant used to ‘disappear’ into ‘thin air’.


I thought there is no way in hell I’m ever doing this sh!thouse job again, so I’m ganna buy a new heater core tomorrow – just to be safe (the fairlane one was intact, but dated 1997 – time for a newy)

Finished off the blend motor. I’m sure there’s many ways to move it (I was going to actually locate it INSIDE the box, but thought the cold aircon might f%^k with it. This is what I did….






This is what it looks like now, with the old heater core. Hopefully I can find a new one soon so I can get it back in and bolted up for good!!



I’m hoping I can find some motivation to finish off the wiring. Would have been nice to smash it out last week….I felt like I was on a role!

Ok…I think I’ve now put the dash in and removed about 12 times now…!!

Today started with finishing the heater box off. Put a brand new heater core in, sealed it up.




Next I put the sound deadening in – all the stuff I removed from the fairlane. Saves effort and $$$ rather than using dynamat




Used the trusty heat gun for a few bits, as the XH isn’t quite the same as the NL (but it’s close)…

Next I put the box back in. This took some fair effort. There was a bit of cursing going on here…. The sound deadening really cuts the room down. Its very TIGHT!!


Put the dash in/out/in/out a few times… Put some rivnuts in the top mounting section. Also discovered the passenger air pipe on dash was JUST touching the blend motor….Only ‘just’!! I CBF removing the whole thing again after the effort it took to put it in….so I used the trusty heat gun once again


Problem solvered!

Then I didn’t feel like doing much else, so thought I’d see what the rest of the interior will look like to give me some motivation





You can see here – I’ll cut this XH demister plastic down to make it fill the gap


This was quite handy, as I can now identify EXACTLY where I need to make the hole in the trans tunnel for the engine loom.

I’ll make a trip to bunnings tomorrow and grab some retic hose or something to make up some demister vents. I’m not sure how well its going to work, but I have bugger all room to play with – as you can imagine with where the edge of dash is/windscreen mount. I’ll have to drill holes in the edge of the dash too, as there is no gaps atm.

Hard to explain, but hopefully you get my drift. Basically means it’s a fkn pain-in-the-A!!!

But we all appreciate and love your work. It'll be well worth it when its done, we wait with baited breath

Damn, another XH with Trip computer, climate control, etc.

dam mate very nice job on the ute ill be doing similar dash rewiring on my ute some good info on here

Cheers guys!

Snap - no excuses now mate!! Time for you to out-do us all again!!