 |
|
Dash is just hanging in the car after the cage was installed, but I have a bunch of loose wires dangling free just below the dash. Which wires are required to keep the car running and track worthy, which wires can I ditch?
Generically speaking of course, unless someone has a dash wiring diagram…
Use this link and remove whatever you’re comfortable with. Test everything each time you take a wire out, make sure the lights work, car starts, etc.
I removed all the auxiliary harnesses under the dash. That would be seperate harnesses with plugs on either end. The car wouldn’t start. I put back in the harness with the headlight control. It has a white, 3 pin connector that goes across the car to the ECU. The corrsponding connector is at a break out near the ECU connector. Car starts.
There’s a mess of wires still in the driver’s area. Most of them seem to go through the firewall to the fuse box. I’m not sure if it’s worth the trouble to try to eliminate them. They’re bundled together going into the fuse box. Would that be considered stripping wires out of a harness and therefore not permissable?
That also brings up another question. Is there a way to remove the rear window defogger harness within the intent of the rules? It appears to be bundled with the brake lights in going from front to back.
KB
Bumping this old thread.
During the off-season I am going to start converting my non-class legal track rat into a SpecE30. My body wiring harness that is in the car now has been reduced to only the wires necessary to run the engine, gauges, brake lights. Does this fall under Section 1.3 “if it doesn’t say it then you can’t do it”? Obviously I would like to use my current harness as it makes debugging 100x easier. Thanks.
IMO no one is going to care what you do with your wiring. It’s a common practice with high end builds, not that I’ve ever owned one, to strip the tub clean of wiring, and then just put back what you need.
I would say if you can remove the system you can remove the wires in the system. I did this a year ago or more. You’re going to need to pull all the wrapping of the harness than runs down the driver side and into the trunk to the active check system. If i remember correctly speaker wires aren’t part of the harness so you can remove them first. Stereo wires are twisted together so they are easy to find and I think they can be removed before opening up the body harness. The active check system is the main offender. I don’t remember my logic as to why it can be removed though. I think I just started by disconnecting the harness from the body of the car up to the firewall grommet below the fuse box. Then I seperated the component branches and cut them off as they T into the harness. I removed the screws that hold the fuse box together and pushed the harness up so I had slack in the fuse box. I think I had to cut some wires and splice them like the brake lights and the rear defrost. When I was done I only had one wire going into the trunk for the brake lights. The ground to the steering column way supplied by the turn signal or cruise stalk harness so you need to make a new ground to get your wipers working again. I think there were about 2 active check system wires for every wire that was actually needed. The removed wires actually filled a large trash bag.
I wish I could give specifics but the car is in storage. You pretty much have to figure it out on your own anyway. If you are at all colorblind you don’t want to do this.
^ Stereo wiring harness is separate and can be unplugged and removed easily. Same goes for cruise control and the OBC/clock if you don’t want that. Most everything else is hardwired into the fuse box or other components requiring much more work unwrapping, tracing, snipping, and splicing.
Most builds I see people only really remove the head unit, amp, speakers, and stereo harness and leave almost everything else. Me personally I don’t like the clutter of unused/unnecessary wires and modules.
In addition the the check control, another large mass of wires is associated with central locking and the window switches. If you ditch your window motors and central lock you can eliminate all the crap on the floor over and across the transmission tunnel. I still have my window motors, but relocated the switches and wires to my dash.
Ranger thanks, I was kind of hoping for a common sense reaction of competitors that if it doesn’t give a competitive advantage then it isn’t a big deal.
Others, I already have the harness stripped down, don’t need to identify anything.
[quote=“JeffK” post=61643]Ranger thanks, I was kind of hoping for a common sense reaction of competitors that if it doesn’t give a competitive advantage then it isn’t a big deal.
Others, I already have the harness stripped down, don’t need to identify anything.[/quote]
I guess I missed that part.
Yup, understood Jeff. I just wanted to add a few points in case someone happens onto the thread in the future.
As far as the legality goes Ranger answered it. Although a gray area, the common sense consensus is that if a system can be removed then all wiring associated with that system can also go. I’ve never heard an official clarification on the matter, but it just doesn’t seem to be enough of an issue to bother.
Now if someone showed up with a fancy custom wiring harness with Mil spec wires, breakers, connectors, the whole nine yards…he might get some funny looks. IMO that would definitely be pushing the spirit of the rules and invoke the catchall “if it doesn’t say you CAN do it, then you CAN’T”.
[quote=“AndrewK” post=61648]Yup, understood Jeff. I just wanted to add a few points in case someone happens onto the thread in the future.
As far as the legality goes Ranger answered it. Although a gray area, the common sense consensus is that if a system can be removed then all wiring associated with that system can also go. I’ve never heard an official clarification on the matter, but it just doesn’t seem to be enough of an issue to bother.
Now if someone showed up with a fancy custom wiring harness with Mil spec wires, breakers, connectors, the whole nine yards…he might get some funny looks. IMO that would definitely be pushing the spirit of the rules and invoke the catchall “if it doesn’t say you CAN do it, then you CAN’T”.[/quote]
I knew a Chinook crewchief who did that on his honda scca car. Funny how the Army tracks the individual gold pins but a whole cannon plug full of them can get tossed out.
[quote=“JeffK” post=61643]Ranger thanks, I was kind of hoping for a common sense reaction of competitors that if it doesn’t give a competitive advantage then it isn’t a big deal.
[/quote]
It’s not every day that we see “Ranger” and “common sense” in the same sentance.
Now “Ranger” and “lunatic”, “nutjob”, “insane”, and “hey, that’s my girlfriend you’re chatting up”, those we see together.