Door wire harness repairs, rework and results

[Spook50]

Over the years I've owned my 62, I've hacked into the door wire harnesses countless times (mostly the front doors) and a couple weeks ago took the initiative to finally tear them apart completely, clean them up and while in there take a look at the factory wire splices along with seeing what I could do to improve things. Starting with the driver's door, I found four splices from the factory (each wrapped in blue electrical tape). None appeared to be corroded and the copper was actually still shiny in appearance, so surprisingly good shape. Me being who I am, I decided to bring out my soldering iron (built it into a whole portable self contained setup which has paid off immensely), flux the splices and flood them with solder. These are fairly large joints to I used my largest tip and cranked it up to 480º C (yes, Celsius). My soldering method is the same as my welding; high heat and minimal contact time, so as to give the heat as little time as possible to travel down wires or through components before the joint is completed and heat can be removed. This is especially important with old wires using non-silicon insulation. Though the insulation will still scorch immediately near the splices, I applied some adhesive lined heat shrink over each one to seal out the elements. Doing this also involved completely stripping the terminals from EVERY connector in the door so I could slide the heat shrink into place. That big blue window connector is dicey with making sure you get all the terminals properly located on reassembly, but I got it on the first try, to my surprise. Unfortunately the pictures I took before and after soldering the splices didn't turn out well at all, so no point in posting those. I had figured I'll just take better pictures when I do the passenger side door, but as it turns out there are NO splices in the front passenger harness; which I assume will be the case for the rear passenger doors as well.

Pretty much my starting point shortly after getting the harness stripped down. I hadn't removed the connectors yet at this point.

Don't ask. I don't know why I did this either....

This may make you laugh, but it works GREAT for pulling wires through rubber grommets and the bellows type sleeves I added for the gap between the body and doors.

The final product before securing it back inside the driver's door. Passenger side is completed now as well. This style of split loom makes it very easy to add wires in the future (which will eventually be power and ground leads for relays, and new speaker wires).

A closeup of the sleeve I used for the body to door gap. This stuff works great, but it's a BEAR to install and get placed right with the grommets.

So, the results? Before doing this my driver's window was about 4 seconds up and 4.25-4.5 seconds up. Not bad, especially considering the truck's age. Afterwards, it's a near exact 3.5 seconds both up and down. It rivals windows on new cars now!

 

[Spook50]

For the front passenger door, I did manage to get a shot of what my intention was going in. This is on one of the two wires that go from the switch connector to the window motor. Even a small amount of corrosion like this can be problematic, so I soldered the terminals on both ends of each wire, and also on the high current leads coming into the door and going to the switch.

After flooding the connection with solder. You can see how the insulation still scorches even as fast as I solder. But it's still very effective and made for some great results. It's an admittedly poor picture, but the goal is to have the solder wick into the strands of the connection through capillary action once it's hot enough. Liquid (no-clean is a must) flux helps immensely with this.

So my results for the front passenger window were outstanding. Just prior to doing this, I timed it at 5 seconds down and 5.5 seconds up (a big increase since the just over 4 seconds up and down immediately after I installed new felt lined runs a year ago, but not as bad as before the new runs). After doing this work, the window runs much stronger at about 3.75 seconds both directions. I couldn't be happier with how this effort turned out.


Given this, in the future I will STILL do my individual door relay mod, which will still allow much more direct power supply to each window motor and lock solenoid, and take the current load off the Toyota switches allowing them to last indefinitely. Plus should a relay ever go bad, it's much easier and less costly to acquire a relay (and even keep a spare or two in a convenient location) than a replacement door switch. For now though, the front windows and locks work better than they ever have in the 24 years I've owned my 62.

 

[OSS]

That’s great. All the wiring in the cruiser is “barely adequate” from a performance point of view. All the wire gauges for everything is smaller than ideal.
I replaced my cabin fan wiring with 10AWG duplex straight to the battery and holy cow it’s like a jet engine now.
I think all the wires in the entire vehicle are small gauge so they’ll fit in a bundle in a loom. If everything was 12AWG, the wire bundles would be huge - and it would cost a lot more.

 

[Perovich]

Looks great! Gives me inspiration to finally tackle my wiring after chopping it all for body work.
I love seeing the level of craftsmanship that goes into these things, well done!

 

[Spook50]

That’s great. All the wiring in the cruiser is “barely adequate” from a performance point of view. All the wire gauges for everything is smaller than ideal.
I replaced my cabin fan wiring with 10AWG duplex straight to the battery and holy cow it’s like a jet engine now.
I think all the wires in the entire vehicle are small gauge so they’ll fit in a bundle in a loom. If everything was 12AWG, the wire bundles would be huge - and it would cost a lot more.

Honestly every wire in the vehicle would've fared far better over the years (and from the get-go) by simply being one size higher. 16 instead of 18, 12 instead of 14, etc. One of my projects I'm dipping my toes into as far as research is a more readily available replacement blower motor (ideally, a brushless motor with built in PWM) and improved wiring that'll still operate off the OEM fan selector switch. I think regardless of what motor is used, 10AWG for power and ground is mandatory. It's also what I'll be running to each door for the relay mod I have planned. I've even got all the parts to do it (including a keyless entry that said mod will allow me to incorporate). I just need to find my templates I made for relay mounts inside the doors so I can cut the metal for them.