engine swap electronics

[bLaCkFoXsA]

okay so this is probably an incredibly dumb question, but i'm putting a different engine into my car and want to redo ALL the wiring in the entire car. As i'm getting a half cut, there isn't a lot i can do until i actually go out and buy it so what i was wondering is what does NOT come in the loom? As in what will i have to run my own wires for?
Cheers

edit - i'm putting an sr20det into my ta22, and want to make sure none of the wiring that is left is the original old stuff

[OXR]

Wanting to redo ALL the wiring in the entire car and actually achieving it, well good luck.
What's the car.
What's the half cut your considering?

[bLaCkFoXsA]

i'm putting an sr20det into my ta22, and i guess i should clarify, i'll be using the loom and general wiring from the silvia, but i want to replace all the 40 year old crap from the ta22 (like fuel tank/tail lights/whatever else isn't in the loom)

i then want to basically wrap it/make it all as neat as possible so i only have to run 1 big bunch through the firewall, as the original loom that i pulled out was an absolute mess and looked like crap

[wilbo666]

I'm not sure what you mean by "re-doing" the whole wiring... but in general it isn't the best or most elegant way to go about an engine swap in my opinion

Btw saying what car and what engine etc you are swaping might be useful information!

Cheers
Wilbo

[bLaCkFoXsA]

yeah i wasn't thinking too straight when i posted this, and didn't know how to change it.. then engine will be an sr20det from either an s13 or s14 silvia front cut. I'm putting it into my ta22 celica.
I'm completely open to any advice because this is the first time i've ever had to do something like this, but i just want to replace all of the old wiring..

[OXR]

There will be alot of irrelevant wireing in the silvia loom, so i'd tend to tackel rationalising that first myself. But you say you have pulled out the original TA22 wireing. Does this mean all the wireing behind the dash, or cut back to the fuse block?
Anyway back to original question. Yes.
You would usually try and keep the original wireing and the SR20 engine management loom effectively separate. The silvia loom you would remove all unnessary circuits like indicators horn ABS ect. I guess if you were intergrateing the silvia cluster to the ta22 then your approch to the silvia loom would be different. (if that is possible).
Why a SR20 for a first time project?

[bLaCkFoXsA]

ahk well i pulled out my entire ta22 loom, everything from inside AND the engine bay.. basically i'm starting over, obviously i'm salvaging headlight plugs etc, but i want to replace all of the wires... so basically would you suggest leaving all of my wiring until i have everything there? When i'm finished i'm looking to have basically nothing left of the original car apart from the shell/lights.
As for the question of why i'm going with an sr20... why not? lol
I have a lot of friends who have done engine conversions before with other cars, I know someone with about 6 ta22's for in case i cut too much and need parts and i have a qualified boilermaker/welder in the family... i'll be calling on a lot of knowledge from other people.
I was going to try to get a 3tgte, but found out that it wasn't going to be particularly kind when it comes to getting parts. SR engines are a dime a dozen and parts are straight off the shelf

also, power!

[thechuckster]

I'd suggest you treat this as 2 seperate tasks:
- re-wire the chassis loom (e.g. lights, dash, stereo, fan, etc)
- engine loom
you'll have to work out how the Nissan engine looms integrate/connect to it's own chassis loom (to pass things like engine temp, alt light, Spark & Inj power, etc) as well as remove the stuff your own chassis doesn't have (ABS, A/C, airbags, etc). You'll probably find things like the dash,ignition switch, wiper and headlight stalks won't work with the nissan loom as they're wired up differently and switch/connect things differently.

Huge job for a 1st time project. Lots of reading and searching to do to identify and modify bits in the nissan loom. In some respects, you'd be better off finding an entire nissan car and shifting everything over and then removing the bits you don't need (ABS, airbag, etc).

[bLaCkFoXsA]

that's basically the plan (at least for the front half anyway)
as i said above, all i want to use from the ta22 is the chassis/exterior

thanks though, i appreciate the info

[oldeskewltoy]

If I may....... I went down this road with my AE71 build... partly because old wiring can lead to problems, but also old, and odd relays (or other electrical components) are expensive and often nearly impossible to get.

I went with something called an EZ mini 20 harness (Wiring Harness). There is one big problem with these types of harnesses... no relays! So, a relay block(4) was added.



and I used a plastic cutting board as the new electric mounting for the fusebox, and relays

[Suavemechanic]

Hi , the big issue is chasing faults down the track, if you use common sense and make a wiring diagram as you go it will help a lot ,( ideally draw it first THEN go out to the car and build it ) find a LOT of different coloured wires .try and stick vaguely to the factory colours for stuff like indicators, headlights etc
i found a painless relay /extra circuit kit in a clearance bin and it was fantastic ,nice fat wire,labeled every few inches and simple to use
another option is numbered wire which is all the same colour but clearly numbered
my old holden had little bits of tape every where with labels which fell off or were unreadable in a few months
good luck

[bLaCkFoXsA]

@oldskewltoy
wow, that seems like a really good way to do it, i especially like the cutting board!
i'll have to see if they post to australia..

@suave
yeah i've done a fair bit of electronics work in the past, but obviously nothing to this scale, so i know the importance of clearly labelled wiring.. however, automotive wiring diagrams fly straight over my head, and i just want to make sure i don't miss anything. I'm considering getting a top view wireframe type pic of the car, and then making a basic diagram of where my wiring needs to go

[Suavemechanic]

yeah i remeber seeing a ww2 era photo of some of that peg board with hooks in it , they ran the cables out to various points then bundled the lot
( before zip ties ! )
my best tools are a proper trade quality crimper and a box of connecting blocks
and the biggest problem is adding more cool stuff like amps ,door poppers and boot openers and having to pull my ends out of the connecting block to go bigger
connectors are good cos as a car nut it all has to come out at some point, and you can do the job in manageable/logical chunks
(and bad cos there is a potential fault in every join ! )

[bLaCkFoXsA]

yeah i'll try to keep in mind that solder/heatshrink isn't my friend for this.. too messy when it comes to adding stuff in.. i'm thinking i'll try breaking this down into sections, and i might throw in a few unconnected wires for any future additions i want to make.. i'll definitely be running my stereo wiring at the same time though.. I'd like to have a system with properly run cables for once instead of having them stashed away under the carpet!

[BLK_20v]

I re-did my KE loom, but i stole a loom out of an ae102 with immoboliser and central locking etc. Was a little painful, but not too bad once the car was stripped.