Such a mess, not one cable was left untouched. They were either cut, spliced, joined to others, or in the case of the pair of yellow wires, left to go off to another device. I didn't want any of that, but I couldn't just cut the connector short. wires at the bottom of the picture go off to the steering column plugs, so the distance between the ignition barrel and the steering column is fixed. I had to rebuild the wires, so I bought some spare wire and some new spade terminals.
The spade terminals were quite simple to work with, but I'm glad I had the right tool. Basically the connector was lightly clamped on to the cable;
Just to hold it in place, then it was clamped properly;
Note the two connector clamps, one to clamp the wires and one to clamp the sleeve. Just for good measure I then tinned the wires with solder to make a good contact. I also needed to flare the back of the curled over section. The latch mechanism in the connector block was for slightly larger terminals so it wasn't working properly for this sized connector. It didn't take much tweaking to get it working though.
The offending wires were cut off, leaving different length wires. This was a good thing, because it meant that the joints weren't all in the same place. This cuts down on bulk as well as potential breaks in the insulation causing short circuits.
Once the new wire was spliced on (linesman splices, nice and secure) they were soldered together then heat shrink sleeving applied. The end result looked like this;
So much better and safer. A quick trial on the ignition barrel;
and everything looks good. The fit was incredibly tight, so much so that a couple of the terminals were pushed out the block. I opened them up a little to make it a bit easier, put them back in the block and they worked fine. Still very tight, but at least they went on to the connectors now.
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