Loom cleanup

Well, this is where I started;

And this wasn't even the full loom, I'd missed a section at this point!!

First job was to understand my random labelling. It was handwritten on masking tape, and some of it was readable but the majority wasn't. I pinched my wife's label maker and replaced all the labels. At this point I also realised that I'd not labelled everything...

It turns out a lot of the ones I'd not labelled are actually not used. Going back through this blog I was able to see the ones I'd left out, figure out what they did and then mark them appropriately.

Once they were all marked up, it was time to strip out the unwanted parts. First, the instrument loom. The main thing here was the heater and window controls and the power associated with both. The process was to basically start at one end, and work it through by removing the old tape, removing the unwanted wires, then binding up the remaining wires. It worked mostly well, there were a couple of tight spots on the wires that may have been a mistake but overall it's made a decent job;

This has left me with the switch gear (bottom and bottom right) the head unit wires (centre), the instrument cluster (at the top), then on the right there is a ground wire and the handbrake switch coiled up, then the four connectors off to the main loom.

I've tried to keep the removed wires intact, even to the point where I've removed terminals from the plugs. I've had to cut a few wires though, particularly the power and ground leads where they join together. Cut, insulation tape then loom tape, hopefully that should keep things sealed up.

So next is to repeat the process with the rear loom. Oh, and this atrocity;

This is what is left of the ignition barrel wiring after the butchery of 'alarm installation'. There isn't a single wire that hasn't been attacked in some form. And it's all big thick cable. My job will be to cut the whole lot out and replace all the wires. I've bought some 30 amp cable and some 6.3mm spade connectors. Luckily the connector itself is basically a cage for standard female spade connectors, so as long as I can replace the wiring and reterminate the new leads then I can rebuild the connector. That's the plan at least, but it can't go anywhere until I get a crimping tool as I don't appear to have one! That's on order from Ebay, should arrive next week. But I have lots to keep me entertained before then.