Factory splices inside the wiring harness?

[alex e]

I have a 75 a 76 and a 77 harness. Today I am working on re-looming the 77 harness that I'm installing. My plan is unwrap and inspect the harness for broken or cut wires, make necessary repairs, then loom it all and re-wrap with tape. I am focusing on the dash section right now. All the old electrical tape is off. I left the blue tape on just to keep it from falling apart, etc. What I have found is maybe 2/3 dead end wires, and several of what appear to be factory splices close to the gauge cluster section. Each splice is 1 wire spliced onto 2-3 of the same color. Each usess a uniform size copper C crimp, exactly placed, each wire stripped to the same length, etc. They look perfectly done and none show any fouling, but were wrapped with 1.5" wide electrical tape. I only took them apart to investigate what the hell they were. In total there are about 6 or 8. My thought is to solder them and shrink wrap them, but I don't want to start pulling them apart. Maybe coat with dielectric grease to reduce impedance and keep air out and then just wrap them back up?





























What do you electrical experts say?

 

[knorrena]

I have rewired a few vehicles in my time and have spent many hours hunting and destroying electrical gremlins. In that time I have never seen a soldered joint in a cruiser. Thus I have adopted the practice of crimping and heat shrinking - no soldering.

 

[grant5127]

I do the solder shrink wrap thing myself........

 

[cruiserbrett]

there are lots of factory toyota splices in the harness.
I dont think you need to redo them, just run some shrink tube over them and forget about them. Generally the ones I have seen are in great shape and done better than I could do.

 

[alex e]

Gotta take them apart to do the shrink tubing.... as I now notice many of these are a single stripped wire with 2/3 new wires crimped to that bare section with the shielding removed. So even more of a PITA to do if you ask me. I am thinking leave them alone and jut re-wrap them.

 

[malcb]

Crimp vrs solder question again - just comes down to personal preference often although a bad solder job can cause more problems than it solves.

I would check the connections and tape back up, perhaps with an amalgamating tape.

A good crimp will keep the air out of the actual connection. One of our electrical guys once was checking a die set and lug (big cable, inch plus diameter) and showed me how he cut the compressed section across the strands and checked the cross section, it was a fine stranded wire and it just looked like solid copper.

 

[alex e]

So after removing the old electrical tape and zip tying the junctions where the harness branches off, I wrapped the splices back up super tight with new electrical tape, and put the entire harness inside a 1" split loom, and at the far headlight ends, 1/2" split loom. I placed zip ties every foot over the split loom, and then wrapped it in electrical tape, just leaving the connections for the ignition, instrument cluster, and dash knobs hanging out.

Now all I gotta do it remember how to route it!

 

[antFJ]

https://forum.ih8mud.com/40-55-series-tech/206819-antfj-77-build-2.html - scroll down a little bit

i took my loom apart like you... foot by foot i re-wrapped everything in high quality electrical tape after spraying the wires and connections down with cleaner to get all the gunk off from the old 30 year old tape.

all i did was clean them.. heat shrink, and then wrap with blue tape like I found them.

 

[alex e]

WHat was weird was how clean mine was. I only dissected the 77 harness though. Surprisingly the rodents at our ranch barely touched the harness. Now they ATE the seats, mind you.

 

[donny paradise]

all i did was clean them.. heat shrink, and then wrap with blue tape like I found them.

How did ya get heat shrink on the multi-wire connections with out cutting one of the main feed wires?

 

[antFJ]

good point! they way i found them.. and the way i put them back was they were not laid out parallel with the harness like in the poster's pictures above. The splices sort of stuck out.. the shrink wrap that i put on them slid over the wires and then were tapped like i have in my link up above. then they were folded over and taped with the black tape so you would really never know they were there. clear as mud?

i don't have any pictures sorry.