Wiring Dilemma

[Gerrha]

Thanks to those who have put the wiring information into the Resources area. They are very helpful. But either I am missing something in front of my face, or there is one final critical area of information that seems missing.

As an example: Laying on my dining room table for the last 6+ months, I have a very large cable with dozens of connectors and wiring from my 97 that runs from the dash area into the engine area. Today, I looked over these connectors and determined that several needed to be replaced. One of these is, 90980-10214. The information that would be helpful, is to what does this connector connect to?

Another example: I know that I need to replace cable 82165-60081, which disappointingly, is no longer available. To make matters much worse, I think I thew it out. This situation might be salvageable, if I knew what connectors were on that cable with wire lengths and so on. Then likely, I could rebuild it.

Is there a source for this information?

 

[Malleus]

@Gerrha
The Wiring Harness Repair manual.
CTRL+F searches the .pdf; the first return is the connector housing itself (in this case, there are two identical housings, with different part numbers), the second is the housing list:

all the part numbers are listed by the last five (the first five are all the same: 90980). In this case, your connector housing is a female and the corresponding male is 10213. You need to match the number of cavities to get this. Alternately, you can search for the parts on either side in the list and visually compare them (if they have the same number of cavities, in this case, only one works).

You could also refer to Section "G", which lists all the connector housing pairs. Be aware that not all connector housings in a particular harness have mating connector housings available for purchase. Some (very few) are supplied with the vendor supplied components. All the engine sensors come to mind. You can only get the female connector housings (with one exception); the male connector housings are part of the sensor assemblies. The exception to this rule is the ECT sensor connector housing in the engine harness. It's NLA. For some inexplicable reason. If you need one, you'll have to rob it off another engine harness, from another Toyota from the '90s.

FWIW, the "cavity" is where the terminal goes, in the connector housing. This DOES NOT represent the number of wires into your particular connector housing. Not all housing cavities are used in every case. But this will eliminate a connector housing with a smaller number of cavities as your choice.

Ignore the repair wire and sleeve parts; they are there for the dealer repairs. IMHO, you do not want to use them. You can, because you have time and you care about how your harness is repaired, crimp new terminals onto your existing harness leads (they are almost always an inch or two longer than strictly necessary). Toyota sells the connector housings, for the most part (if thre's an "X" in the supply column,Toyota won't have it), but not the terminals. Ballenger Motorsports has them.

 

[Malleus]

As to how to rebuild the harness you lost, the easiest way is to start with the components the harness connects to, and build it that way. That's how the designers do it.

 

[Gerrha]

@Gerrha
The Wiring Harness Repair manual.
CTRL+F searches the .pdf; the first return is the connector housing itself (in this case, there are two identical housings, with different part numbers), the second is the housing list:
View attachment 3747637

all the part numbers are listed by the last five (the first five are all the same: 90980). In this case, your connector housing is a female and the corresponding male is 10213. You need to match the number of cavities to get this. Alternately, you can search for the parts on either side in the list and visually compare them (if they have the same number of cavities, in this case, only one works).

You could also refer to Section "G", which lists all the connector housing pairs. Be aware that not all connector housings in a particular harness have mating connector housings available for purchase. Some (very few) are supplied with the vendor supplied components. All the engine sensors come to mind. You can only get the female connector housings (with one exception); the male connector housings are part of the sensor assemblies. The exception to this rule is the ECT sensor connector housing in the engine harness. It's NLA. For some inexplicable reason. If you need one, you'll have to rob it off another engine harness, from another Toyota from the '90s.

FWIW, the "cavity" is where the terminal goes, in the connector housing. This DOES NOT represent the number of wires into your particular connector housing. Not all housing cavities are used in every case. But this will eliminate a connector housing with a smaller number of cavities as your choice.

Ignore the repair wire and sleeve parts; they are there for the dealer repairs. IMHO, you do not want to use them. You can, because you have time and you care about how your harness is repaired, crimp new terminals onto your existing harness leads (they are almost always an inch or two longer than strictly necessary). Toyota sells the connector housings, for the most part (if thre's an "X" in the supply column,Toyota won't have it), but not the terminals. Ballenger Motorsports has them.

Thanks Malleus, for the very detailed reply and also for uploading the wiring information for all of us.

Correct me if I am wrong, but from the above, I still cannot find out what 90980-10214 connects to or with? In theory, I could go to the overall EWD and for this particular cable, look at the provided individual drawings for all of the connectors, find one that looks like a 90980-10214, then use the schematic trace it back to what it connects to. That is a pretty cumbersome process, and in this case, there are at least 4-5 connecter drawings that look the same, or are the same.

For the cable that I lost, the only solution I can see is to buy a "used" cable and repair any connectors that might need repair. Alternatively, I could use the "used" cable as a guide to build an entirely new cable by identifying, one-by-one, all of the individual connectors.

What seems missing from this process, is a tabulation of every cable in the vehicle along with every connector used with each cable.

 

[Malleus]

You are correct. Only Toyota has those design drawings. If you want one, you'll have to make it.

 

[Malleus]

Getting back to your harness question, searching the EWD isn't any more difficult than searching the harness repair manual; that's the real benefit of having a .pdf. I read technical papers for a living, I know the technology I research very well, and I still miss details reading that Adobe's search finds...and far more quickly than I can read.

FWIW, I have the page display and page navigation toolbars displayed; it saves me having to go the menus or remember the 40 Adobe keyboard shortcuts. I use two-page layout and fit-to-width when scrolling through a document. As I said, I do this for a living so I'm pretty quick about it, but it's not that hard.

The first place to start, assuming you know nothing about the harness that you're trying to research (which is hard to believe, but OK), is the harness joining connectors. However, since this is a two cavity connector housing, it's most likely that it's stuck on a sensor/switch. Since the matrix indicates that the connector housing is unsealed, it's in the cabin somewhere. My bet is it's in the dash, but that's a busy place, so look at the individual connections in the cabin. Fortunately, this isn't a 200 series, if it was, we'd be here all week.

The electrical wiring routing on ppg 24-28 illustrate all the possibilities. I'd start with the seats, because they're the simplest. The power source flowchart lists every component and the page it's on. I checked the buckle alarm (I know it's a two-wire circuit), the power source lists it on pg 140, and the connector housings are on page 142. Neither of them fit the -10214, so you can cross them off the list.

Back to the seat routing (pg 28, BTW), the component list, P14 through P24, lists the names of all the circuit components, Power Seat Motor being prominent, so search for that. You can use the selection tool to grab text, so you don't have to type. CTRL+C copies it and CTRL+V pastes it into the already open CTRL+F search bar. The power source matrix lists it on page 118. CTRLF again, type in 118 and you'll go right to that page. Scroll a little farther in the seat circuit section and page 120 has the connector housing illustrations. Looks like my bet was wrong; P17 looks suspiciously like -10214. ( I have both the EWD and repair manuals open, so I can switch between them)

The circuit diagrams list the connector housing names so you can verify the wires in each cavity.

So, P17 is the connector for the lumbar seat control (who knew?) You won't find the male in a harness, it's on the switch.

 

[Malleus]

This may not be the only place this particular connector housing is used, but since you're essentially back tracing Toyota's design work, you have to expect to put in a little sweat equity. They're not going to give you the ability to reproduce what they are buying from their suppliers and reselling to you.

If you do what I do, and mark your copy of the EWD with every connector housing part number as you use it to check circuits, pretty soon you'll have a decent map to search through. I use the insert text box, on both the EWD and repair manual, so that I know where a particular housing is used, for later research. The text you insert in the text boxes is also searchable.

Of course, you need the full version of Acrobat to do this; the reader lacks this functionality. I periodically upload annotated copies of my EWD copy, as it gets more and more detailed...at least that was my plan, I have to go back and check to see that I actually did that

 

[Malleus]

FWIW, that took all of 5 minutes. Typing took a little extra.

 

[Gerrha]

Thanks Malleus. I agree with everything you have said about searching through the documents once you have that connector number. It is cumbersome, but doable, and that makes it just fine.

The cable I no longer have is more problematic since it is no longer available, which of course means, I cannot get many of the connector numbers directly. But maybe with a little detective work that too can be done by matching the unknown connector drawings with the connector drawings from known cables. That just might work.

Another thing with the wiring. These cables all use multiple odd-shaped clamps. To be sure, most of the clamps are no longer available, but now and then you get lucky and can find a few. The problem then is, you don't know how many are used or where they are used.

Oh well...

 

[Gerrha]

Hello Malleus,
Been working off-and-on with the above wiring and have a couple of questions.

First, regarding the 90980-10214 connector in my original post. You said, it helps to know the cable you are working with. That is very true, and it turned out to be important in this case. You said since it is a non-waterproof connector it ought to be inside, and that led you to the lumbar seat control. But, when I looked at it, the connector is covered with grime, which made me think hmm, maybe not inside. A little further study led to the radio antenna motor in the engine bay. I was rather pleased with myself for tracking that down - thanks to your guidance.

However, I do have a couple of questions. You mentioned that, in your opinion, it is better to replace the terminals rather than use the Toyota pigtails. I have looked carefully at the Ballenger website, and I do not see any terminals available. Am I missing them? Also, let's say they do have individual terminals. How do I know what terminal to get? From what I see, Toyota does not provide enough information to figure out what terminal to use for a particular connector. Toyota only provides the connector and pigtail numbers from what I can see. There are drawings of the terminals, but those would be tough to use for buying replacements considering the 1000s of available terminals.

Thanks