Fire Damage Repair

Well, you are right about the nightmare.....

I have repaired a lot of burned harnesses over the years and in the case of dashes figure a replacement harness is usually the way to go.

There are companies like painless wiring for one that make kits for the various vehicles. Maybe you could just buy the dash kit or maybe a wrecker has one? The harness comes apart in modules at the fuse panel. You need to unbolt the center back bolt on the panel's back and it comes apart into a dash harness, an engine harness, a front clip harness and a body harness.

Using a good wiring schematic, you might be able to replace the wires one at a time, but heat has a tendency to change the wire colors which can mess you up. The short that started the mess is also it's own issue because those wires will melt internally so you think a length of harness looks ok, but inside the wire harness wires have gone through and are crossed with something else. On Jeeps, the orange wires are nasty for doing this. A melt can happen on the exhaust or choke that can fry the dash harness...

It takes a lot of patience, good luck.

Mike

86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00 88 Cherokee 235 BFG AT's

Randall Br>

if you need any advise these guys should be able to help you

Mike:

This is precisely the type of advice I was hoping for. I knew it was going to be much more than replacing a few wires.

I have a complete harness, which arrived a couple days ago, and when I opened the box, what I found looked like an Eagle's nest made of wire.

Nevertheless, this is a great, clean, solid Jeep and I will do whatever it takes to restore it, even if I have to resort to taking the project to a shop. The problem there is finding a good Jeep shop in this part of the country (North Idaho).

Many thanks for the help.

Sincerely,

Depending on the harness you got, there are a couple ways to install it. If it was labeled then you can tear out all the old stuff and go for it.

If it isn't labeled, then I prefer to either lay the new one beside the old one which can be interesting for tangles or I cut the old one at each plug leaving an inch or two of the old wire hanging there for a color and gauge matchup. I then just swap the plugs as I install. Depending on the condition of the 'new' harness' plugs, sometimes I just leave the old plug in place and solder and heat shrink the wires onto it for the better conditioned plug.

Mike

Randall Br>

Do yourself a favor and get a bulk supply of zip ties. Securely reattaching the wires helps prevent a round of new electrical problems several years from now after the wires have bounced around, wore out or worked loose. Also remember not all connectors have a place to connect. Quite often a harness has applicabilty across several models and years. Some may have more connections than you have equipment for.

It also helps to take copious notes on what connected to where and if the colors were different on both sides of the connector. I've had plenty of situations over the years where the plug had wires of one set of colors on the plug but another set on the socket. Never had to do much Jeep wiring so I don't know if that's a likely problem or not. But if you've got an in-line connector (not going direct into a socket on something) it really helps to make note of the colors. Assuming, of course, that the replacement harness follows factory colors, that is.

I've generally found a vehicle that's caught fire is not one worth keeping. Fuel fires being least problematic but electrical ones the worst. If there was something 'wrong enough' about the wiring that the designed system couldn't handle via fuses I'm never confident it's going to get solved without truly pinning down the problem. So if you're not absolutely sure where the problems are you'll probably regret trying to keep it. But hey, give it a shot!

-Bill Kearney

And take pictures, lots of them..

Worse if the wires got hot enough to do that much damage, their coating tends to become really really brittle and far more likely to cause another short if left in place. You *might* have some luck with minor repair of any circuit boards you find damage with some of the paintable copper or silver stuff from places like MCM with a big problem simply getting them clean enough for it to stick. Also check all of the connectors. Heat will usually get enough outgassing to corrode up the connector, which will also go intermittent on you.

Lon "ahh, the fun of japanese and british roadster wiring..." Stowell

Mike Romain proclaimed:

I agree with this. One of the first big automotive repairs I was in, was to help replace a wiring harness that had burned up in a van. It was a 1970 Dodge A100, and maybe it was 1975. We did a hell of a good job, and everything worked when we were done, but somehow we didn't find the real cause. It was back in the shop with a burned up wiring harness in less than a month. How many problems like this do you need in one lifetime?

Earle

---snippy---