Mucho work accomplished today with both Jeffs stopping by. Jeff 1 disassembled another engine while Jeff 2 and I worked on the harness and scraping the interior.
We have separated the door harnesses and the anti-theft stuff, shown in the picture below. The wiring amounted to 7.5 lbs. We still have a bit more to go to remove optional things from the car but we've got the bulk of it. The end result will be a factory OEM harness with high quality wires and connectors that has the necessary feeds to run the car, plus lights etc. I plan that this car will remain street legal since I find the option of driving on the road to test things out really valuable.
The sound deadening is now completely gone and came in at 9 lbs even. So it is a worthwhile thing to do, although it is painful to squat there in the car for hours.
Last edited by Ron Earp; 09-05-2011 at 06:39 PM.
From looking at your pics some of the sound deadening tar paper was already removed from my car. Lucky me.
What is the harness that runs under where the front seats used to be? I see the plugs that used to be for the power seats but is there any wiring of any importance contained in that bundle?
My ITE car is sitting in around 2800# empty. Im going to try and take 100# more off this winter but Im running out of weight reduction ideas. Also have to add some weight back in with a fire system and an accusump.
Pass side door inner sheetmetal, and the rear package tray should take off some decent weight. May also go to tubular front and rear bumpers.
Very nice work on the wiring harness. Im getting my nerve up to take on this now that the car is running. Figured I was asking for trouble messing with wiring on a car that wasnt already running.
Anthony
What year car do you have?
On the SN95 cars that bundle is about 1.5" thick and has at least 60+ wires. The majority of the wires are for the keyless entry system, the stereo (this car has the Mach 460 so many wires), cigar lighters, parking brake switch, cross harness that connects both door harnesses, the passive anti theft system, defroster, lights, backup, brake lights, fuel pump, fuel sender, immobilizer, and that is about it.
All I wanted was the brake lights, tail lights, fuel stuff, defroster, and signals. You might want less.
The harness is done now and I'll take pictures of it. Very slim and svelte with probably eight wires going to the back. Now the harness will cross and route under the dash instead of over the tunnel, another reason to clean it up as you can get rid of the mid-branches and get them out of the floor pan. Weight is coming out of the car. A few pounds at a time, but it is coming out and will add up.
The door skins were surprisingly light. I suspect you'll find the package tray is somewhat similar, maybe five to six pounds. If you have a Fox car there were some plastic bumpers you could use but I don't know where and what year models those were. The SN95 bumpers don't weigh much at all and even if I could toss them I probably wouldn't.
Last edited by Ron Earp; 09-07-2011 at 09:27 AM.
It is a time consuming project. You WILL need a Ford factory wiring manual. This lists all the wires, colors, and connector types. The rest is sitting down and understanding what is going on. Sometimes wires will splice, go to multiple connectors, and/or change colors so it takes time.
The job is helped by the fact that the factory connectors are fantastic. On most of the connectors you can flip the back open, push a tab, and you can extract individual wires from the connector. That way you don't have cut wires in the connectors and it is easy to remove them properly.
Okay, I understand the need to be thorough with weight savings on this car.
But I don't think it's legal to remove individual wires from the harness in most cases, unless there was a harness available that didn't have those individual wires and you are merely turning one factory harness into a different factory harness. The harness itself is the part that needs to stay stock, at least, that's my interpretation.
Josh Sirota
ITR '99 BMW Z3 Coupe
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