ITS Ford Mustang(s) Build - Stripper Stang Part II

[Ron Earp]

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?

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.

[ITEGT]

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.

2000 Mustang GT

Thats what I was afraid of,,, that there are some wires with use hidden throughout the bundle.

How did you isolate what wires were for what? Start at the end say tail lamps and back track?

[Ron Earp]

2
How did you isolate what wires were for what? Start at the end say tail lamps and back track?

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.

[JoshS]

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.

[Ron Earp]

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. .

This is the case. My car was a fully loaded example that had all the options (see posts) that were not on all cars.

For example, shown below is the Mach 460 sound harnesses out of the rear of the car. These were carefully extracted out of the harness intact because they are worth decent money on Ebay.

[Knestis]

That's precisely what we did with Pablo II, untangling all of the smaller assemblies from the bigger assemblies.

The whole exercise was of course predicated on the assumption that when we have permission to remove [whatever] all of the parts associated with [whatever] can come out. And [whatever] was operationalized as either something that the rules specifically allow to be removed OR something that some example of the model of the car, as listed in the ITCS, came without (so under update/backdate).

We then re-wrapped the resulting harnesses the same way the stock ones were, not incidentally finding and fixing a few faults (e.g., rubbed insulation) in the process...

K

[Ron Earp]

That's precisely what we did with Pablo II, untangling all of the smaller assemblies from the bigger assemblies.

It is a pain in the ass but I think it is worth it. In the end you know what you have and you have made it simple to troubleshoot. You can still use the factory manual to troubleshoot it too.

I also bought 1994 and 1998 MY Ford Mustang brochures off Ebay so I could show what was optional on the various years I can cross pollinate from. 1998 MY had a lot of stuff as standard, but in 1994 you could get essentially a stripper that didn't even have AC. The wiring manual shows these optional harnesses too as subassemblies.

Back to the building part, I took a 1998 V6 15x7 stock Mustang wheel and weighed it to see how that shook out. The wheel in question is this one:



And they are just about free from Mustang owners since they invariably take out a loan and upgrade to some blingy 17" or 18" wheels when they put the drop on their hooptie.

Anyhow, they are not serious light weight wheels but they aren't so bad either. With OEM durability and Craigslist availability, they come in at 15.1 lbs. I think they'll be great for rains, intermediates, and/or street tires (yes, the car will have tags/title, got to uphold that IT vestige from double duty days). Heck, at only 4 lbs heavier than the best wheel I was able to find for the Mustang that isn't too shabby. But, on a car that is severely weight challenged they aren't a dry racing option.