I didn't think to come to your thread to respond to this issue!
I will jump all over the place here responding to some of the posts about harness repair.
A linemans splice is total overkill when splicing two simple harness wires together. That splice is as old as the telegraph, and was designed for SOLID wire, though you can, with smaller gauges, do stranded wire. It was designed, as stated, for wires under high tension. Think wires strung between telegraph poles.
Automotive harness wires are not under tension when taped up inside a harness. The best way to create a good solid splice, IF you have the proper crimping tools, and it's the way that Toyota did it, is to use U-Splice crimps or short barrel compression rings. The U-Splices are simple U shaped brass crimps that you crimp onto the wires using an open barrel crimper. They come in several sizes, depending on what size wires you are joining. I use these to re-create 95% of all splices in new harnesses, or when splicing in new wire to old harnesses. The rest of the splices are in later model harnesses where you have to splice in two 12ga wires to a 10 ga wire. I use the large compression rings for those and a small "hammer powered" battery lug crimping die to compress it. Toyota sometimes did not even tape these splices! They just wrapped them into the harness bare. I use heat shrink over mine just because I'm anal.
The second best way is to solder and heat shrink. This works very well for wires up to 14ga and most folks already have the tools and skills to do it. However, when the wire sizes exceed 12ga, or there are multiple large wires to splice together, this becomes more difficult. It is very difficult to get enough heat into a large splice to melt solder even with the large 100 watt pistol type guns. Also it's really easy to overheat the wire insulation trying to get to solder melting temps. Especially the GPT insulation on stock Toyota wire. It melts at very low temps! This is the main reason I use GXL rated wire for new harnesses and all repairs to old harnesses. The insulation has a much higher melting point. One trick is to use a couple of large alligator clips to clip on each side of a splice to act as a heat sink and then use a small butane torch to QUICKLY get the joint hot. I also sometimes use a fiberglass sleeve over the two ends to protect the insulation from burns.
The third way to splice is to use the un-insulated butt splices and cover them with heat shrink. The insulated versions are crap and should only be used when nothing else is available.
The wires in the harness mentioned above that are bare, got that way only because they were laying next to the large WL wire that got so hot it melted it's insulation off. Any wire next to it would also have it's insulation melted, but that wire itself would not have overheated. The smaller wires did NOT over heat so there is no need to replace the entire wire when it's just missing a section of insulation. Tape it and go on. Now if you do find a wire that appears to have been truly overheated from within due to a short then YES!, replace it end to end! The over heated copper wire will be brittle and will break later on.
There is nothing wrong with the Universal harnesses. They use GXL wire, are clearly marked with their function end to end, use modern ATC style fuses and are super simple to wire: IF you are building a Chevy street rod that is...
If you are interfacing one to a Toyota FJ40 and do not truly understand how DC circuits work, and don't know how to read a wiring diagram, you are going to be spending hours and hours figuring out how to make things like the Turn signals, Hazards, and Wipers switches, and the Gauge Cluster interface to the "Painless" harness. Now if you DO understand basic DC, and DO know how to read a schematic it can be relatively easy.
I can easily build the section of harness that melted including all the splices into it. All the ends will be terminated properly. You will only have to remove a single terminal from the key switch connector to install this repair harness. I will even through in a homemade tool to remove said terminal!
just 'cuz I ruined my harness, doesn't mean I will ruin new wires too... well, perhaps... 
Brave man! Or great pain meds... 
