Wiring Harness Transplant (29 Viewers)

[julianramirez1005]

Hello Everyone,
I picked up my grey 89 fj62 ($2800 running and driving) in June this year and have fallen in love with it. When I purchased, I knew that I would have to buy a shell due to the body and frame rust on it. Well, I just purchased a beautiful shell down near la for $3000 and have brought it back home. Desert owned and 99% free of rust. This shell was going to be ls swapped but they lost interest after already removing engine, clipping wiring harnesses at the firewall, cutting engine mounts off frame, and other stuff. I am feeling confident about swapping the internals from my running and driving fj62 into the shell up until I think about all the wiring work. I am pretty new to working on cars and this is by far the biggest project I've ever taken on. My grey fj62 runs and drives with full functionality on everything even the power mirrors haha

I am looking for advice from people with experience transplanting wire harnesses from rig to rig. How long I can expect to be working on this? Aftermarket options? The vast amount of wiring spaghetti is quite intimidating. I am grateful for any advice or links to threads that will help.

PS: I have a Toyota fsm with the wiring diagrams

 

[MWM1]

If I was closer, I would drive my 1988 FJ62 over to you for a reference. Feel free to DM and I will be happy to forward a plethora of photos and close-ups of my wiring under the hood.
Good Luck!

 

[julianramirez1005]

If I was closer, I would drive my 1988 FJ62 over to you for a reference. Feel free to DM and I will be happy to forward a plethora of photos and close-ups of my wiring under the hood.
Good Luck!

Thank You sir, I will keep that in mind when I inevitably run into roadblocks.☺

 

[mattressking]

Always retain factory wiring, do not deviate unless you understand what you're doing and know how to make quality repairs, otherwise you're chasing your tail or causing shorts.

1. Do not make a custom harness, this is by far the most irritating unless you develop a complete flow diagram for maintenance, otherwise it's a mess and leads to many folks having trouble later.
2. Just remove and swap over the harness, this is a really simple task, just takes time and attention to detail.
3. Since you are swapping from like chassis', this is a remove and reinstall, so everything is essentially marked for its location, connectors are specific to plugs assuming you don't deviate from stock.
4. This is the time to inspect each terminal, terminal housing for looseness and corrosion or breakages. I highly recommend you only use factory replacement terminals or connector housings for sanity as well. Most can be had online or at the junkyard with similar year Toyota (land cruiser is nothing special in the realm of connectors and terminals). Otherwise there are numerous vendors who stock sumitomo, yazaki terminals and housings for repairs.
5. Lastly inspect each around ring terminal and clean prior to install.

 

[dmjay]

Label every connector and take a photo of everything. Lay the harness out beside the car and clean every connector. It is just time consuming, not hard.

 

[julianramirez1005]

Always retain factory wiring, do not deviate unless you understand what you're doing and know how to make quality repairs, otherwise you're chasing your tail or causing shorts.

1. Do not make a custom harness, this is by far the most irritating unless you develop a complete flow diagram for maintenance, otherwise it's a mess and leads to many folks having trouble later.
2. Just remove and swap over the harness, this is a really simple task, just takes time and attention to detail.
3. Since you are swapping from like chassis', this is a remove and reinstall, so everything is essentially marked for its location, connectors are specific to plugs assuming you don't deviate from stock.
4. This is the time to inspect each terminal, terminal housing for looseness and corrosion or breakages. I highly recommend you only use factory replacement terminals or connector housings for sanity as well. Most can be had online or at the junkyard with similar year Toyota (land cruiser is nothing special in the realm of connectors and terminals). Otherwise there are numerous vendors who stock sumitomo, yazaki terminals and housings for repairs.
5. Lastly inspect each around ring terminal and clean prior to install.

This is the exact response I needed, Thank You.

 

[cruisermatt]

can you post some pictures of where the wiring was cut? I don't see anything in your pics that would inidicate the facotry wiring was cut.
IF you needed to swap a dash harness, I can tell you two of my techinicians (expereinced) swapped a 62 dash harness out with a good used one in under two hours working togther. So I would estaimate it would take someone new at this a long full day.

 

[julianramirez1005]

@cruisermatt
I will take better pictures soon but that's where it was cut

 

[cruisermatt]

@cruisermatt
I will take better pictures soon but that's where it was cut

I see it now! Ugh, that's such a stupid place to cut it and no reason to do that for any sort of swap, that is the main harness to the battery. So dumb!
Yeah, you'd want to swap the "dash harness" basically all the wires under the dash and that run down both fenders. I'd say practice your dissasembly on the nun runner first since that needs to be pulled anyways. There are connectors near the floor that run to the rear that you can unplug so you don't need to gut the entire truck to do this.