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91 K5 -Procrastination Build - bikini top!

Not much progress to report lately. I bought some small toys; mounting bracket for a 20 lbs co2 bottle and some pieces for installing some synthetic rope on my winch (protector sleeve, Factor55 thimble and “needle” for splicing). The winch stuff isn’t here yet so I’ll post pics of that later this week.

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The thing I’ve been working the most on is my dash wiring. I’ve been slowly trimming out unnecessary stuff but I’ve reached a point where it’s hard to go forward. Being a TBI truck with an electric speedo there’s a metric ton of wiring and it seems to all be intertwined.

Who has experience with Painless Wiring? How “custom” will they make? I’d love to be able to buy a fuse box with just harnesses for the headlight switch, steering column (key, wipers, turn signals) and maybe 1 or 2 accessory power wires. Ideally, this would be plug & play with the harnesses it connects to outside the cab. Is this realistic? I’m not really interested in a “race car” type harness because I don’t want to deal with figuring out the lights.

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I’m not sure how far away from doing this myself John. The PO (me) did some hack work in there I think...

following along for good solutions
 
Yeah, 20+ years of bad splices, taps and unidentified cuts is just too much to ignore. I’m guilty of some of it and it bit me on the ride last Nov, it’s time to fix it.

I’d love to find some recentered H1’s reasonably close too but they’re never out there when you want them.
 
How much have you changed in the engine bay? Could you stand to replace the whole harness and just get one for an earlier truck? Get one for and '84 and newer to get the plug for the turn signal mounted wiper switch.
Otherwise I wonder how much will be pinned incorrectly or not necessary at the junction block.
 
I haven’t changed anything related to the light harness(es) but all the TBI stuff is gone.

An older harness will still have more than I want (hvac, courtesy, etc).
 
Painless or EZ wire new system. Literally the easiest way to make it right. You can get the correct wire ends to use the factory plugs on everything. Been there, done that.

No alligator clips required.
 
I haven’t changed anything related to the light harness(es) but all the TBI stuff is gone.

An older harness will still have more than I want (hvac, courtesy, etc).
Going with the BroFlo4?
 
Well, Painless was a dead end. The do offer "customizable" harnesses meaning gauge changes, extra accessory leads, etc but they don't actually offer custom harnesses. Another issue was that my 91 is too new so they don't off anything for it that would be plug & play with the external light harnesses and such AND if I bought an older model or buggy harness they would not be able to offer support if I had repinning type questions. The guy was nice but ultimately could only offer universal kits and I do any / all custom work (for $350+). I was really hoping for a fuse box with only headlight and column harnesses that would be plug & play with my stock under hood harness plugs but no go.

The EZ Wire site just seems to offer universal kits.

No point in spending a lot of money if I still have to repin it, I guess I'll stare at my harness some more and also consider a u-pull-it harness from a early / mid 80's truck.

BOOOO!!!!!
 
Maybe I don't understand the amount of repairs that you need to do, however I would think that it would take a good amount of time to do an install of a new harness. So if you factor in some schematic staring... maybe it will be close to the same, rather than ripping a lot out?
:dunno:
 
Most of the repair is done, I’ve removed the taps and splices used for old stereo stuff, etc. At this point I was wanting to remove the clutter of leftover harness(es) that aren’t used any more, I only need about 25% of the original stuff.

Either option (aftermarket or excess removal) will take a lot of time. I really wanted to just clean up the wiring so It would be simple with minimal chance for shorts and dangling hot wires, all from tieing up the leftovers under the dash.

The more I think about this I really don’t want to spend the next 10 weekends hunting for a used harness or figuring out what I can unpin from mine. I’ll probably end up cleaning up the current loose ends, taping/covering the left over plugs and tie it all up.

Maybe I’ll wrap it in camouflage so you can’t see it. lol
 

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