now for the rant - I have to have at least one each time I work on the car. First thing I thought is I would install the instrument cluster wiring cuz that should just be plug and play for the most part. Or... not at all. I was losing my shizzle. Let's start with the fun stuff - check out the label on the bag in the first image. Let's pick out the things that are easy to poke at:
1. is it "Factory Fit" if I have to cut the wires to length and install all the end connectors in my spare bedroom?
2. Do you make wiring easy?
3. The bag says loose pc kit in the title... prolly not going to be something that is ready to install, which would be easy, and maybe even all built at a factory to the original wiring confirguration aka factory fit.
Interesting enough, when I went online to see if there were better wiring diagrams I could zoom for my old eyes to read, I found there were updates, which brings me to the 2nd image now: apparently they got enough feedback to remove anything about factory fit and them making wiring easy! This was the only chuckle I had during the cluster wiring process.
then we get to the little F'ing connectors I had to cut off a strip, get into my crimper tool with old hands and not sure it would have been much easier as a younger man, and crimp them successfully. This took a couple nights because within about 15 minutes I would go thru all the swear words I know in English, Spanish, and French and a mangling of those words together, and then would transition to the "make up words" phase. It was appropriate that "A Christmas Story" was on a month ago with the Dad in the basement. Yeah, like that.
Then finally when I got to the gas gauge: the 90deg connector to use was made undersized. Note the unused, different 90 on the left and the one I needed with the undersized holes. More cursing as I walked to the garage and got a couple solderless connectors to circumvent that problem.
Final image I assume is a factory fit wiring harness. I put bulbs in everything and used the battery to verify all the wiring worked and they lit up. I forgot there is 11 bulbs total when I bought a pack of 10 at O'Reilly, so the clock had to wait a day. Turns out it doesn't work, which I expected, but sucks cuz those ain't cheap. We'll see how the fuel gauge wiring goes once this gets into the car along with all the other wiring - I did buy a new gas gauge a decade ago as I knew I was going to care about that.
|