Get a schematic
Strip harness of any loom/tape
Pin by pin from the fuse panel or ecu verify routing one wire at a time and follow through its entire length to make (some dont look like you need them at first but are used to trigger something else)
Ditch about 50% of your harness
Layout harness in bay to see if any wires should be shortened/lengthened to hide as many as possible
Wrap in sexy mesh loom
This is what I do on every build. Which is why you hardly see any wires in my engine bays. @LukeL did the last few and I did the Maro this way. Amazingly if you can follow a schematic it can be a one day job and you will be way more intimate with your wiring for future needs.
^^ great method and also a great time to check condition/continuity of all wires to make sure nothing has broken inside the insulation. On my harness I found an injector signal wire that had been repaired and spliced (poorly) at some point and it was an easy fix while it was all apart.
that’s exactly what I want to do. I know I won’t be using ABS, airbag shit, EGR, and all that kind of crap. If I can delete EVAP I will too. I’ve already noticed a couple wires that look like they got smashed so I’ll want to check a lot of it out anyways. Hopefully I can convince @pirite to help with the wiring stuff bribing him with monster drinks and fatty foods.
on another note, I won $600 last night on the superbowl pool I bought in on…so I started making a cart on RockAuto…I am serious about wanting to DD this thing and use it every bit as much I do/would my '12 F150 (which goes back in may)…so I figure now is the time to replace all the wear parts for quality/new.
if you come across any, please let me know! I’ve spent my whole life on 4cyl shit lol.
I’d love to get some type of handheld tuner for this too, just to delete things that would throw check engine light (even though that won’t matter for my inspection and shit)…I want to retain an OBD2 port for diagnostics and such to be able to properly maintain this thing for the foreseeable future.
I also want to get a short shifter, because I’m gonna need like a 2’ long shift lever, on the stock shifter I’ll have like a foot of throw from gear to gear
So, I had started looking over the harness… it was cut in a few places (he said it wasn’t cut), theres a few connectors that are identical and not labeled, he never did mail me the key after 2 months of hounding him via text and he kept saying “I’ll have it out in the next couple of days”…and then I find out the PATS receiver isn’t in the ECU, it’s either in the gauge cluster or a module in the trunk…neither of which I got. So even if I had the key I wouldn’t beat the PATS system
so, I have a couple options as I seem to have come up with via google.
1: Go to the junkyard and pull a harness, ECU, Key, and PATS unit from a crown victoria or another 4.6 car.
2: pay a fortune for a Ron Francis wiring harness that’s an engine-only harness and send him the ECU I got with these parts for a flash to delete PATS and tweak some other settings for performance and such ($1000+)
3: attempt to build my own harness from scratch using pigtails off the harness I was given, and build/run megasquirt II V3 or greater.
option 2 would be the fastest/simplest. option 1 would be CHEAP. option 3 would likely be the halfway point between 1 and 2 both with cost and reward as far as tuning it for the future could be. I’d probably pay DIY autotune to just build the MS and give me an ecu pigtail to make the harness myself.
If cost were thrown out of the equation, I’d go option 2 all day. If cost were the only thing on my mind I would go option 1. I think there’s enough people in the area that know MS that if I went option 3 and got stuck someone could help me, but again the hassle of it all takes a little away from the appeal of it. If I went option 1, and later wanted to do anything as far as tuning, I’d have to spend $400+ for an SCT flasher setup with software…at which point the MS would have been a better bet from the start.
ugh.
I am going to email DIY autotune and get a quote on a pre-assembled MS setup.
Wouldnt you rather deal with an OEM harness now and get it running?
Spend the money now and hope it goes well hacking up the already hacked harness, or get it running and 100% dialed in NOW on a clean harness, and spend a few bucks down the road.
I fully agree here…I think it’s pretty obvious that’s my rationale with most of the projects I’ve dove into. I have an email into DIYautotune about a pre-assembled MS ecu, we’ll see what I hear back. to go with option 2, it’s $870 for the base harness, then $350 for them to flash the ecu I have to delete PATS (anti-theft chipped key b.s.) and while they’re flashing they’d do a mild performance file and delete egr and all that nonsense. I have a bit of sticker shock on the price, but it would be a bare bones brand new purpose-built harness and plug-n-play. If I got a harness and ecu with key from the junkyard, I’d have to thin it out myself and inspect the wires/connectors for damage and then re-loom for my needs, and have no tune-ability without later spending about $650 for flasher, software, and a basemap to work from…at which point that plus maybe the $100-150 to get the stock junkyard parts…seems like option 2 is a no-brainer. Then again, if I can do the MS for half that…it makes that option pretty attractive.
EDIT: on MS stuff, using the parts list from their 4.6 write-up…looks like $523.50 in parts plus whatever they charge to assemble for me, then add in a wideband…which is getting awful close to option 2. PISS.
