Good Man!

Crimps ARE better and more reliable than soldering. Aerospace knows this, automotive, and F1 motorsport all know this. Proven out by millions of hours of test and development - not a theory.

"Crimping is an efficient and highly reliable method to assemble and terminate conductors, and typically provides a stronger, more reliable termination method than that achieved by soldering." Excerpted from NASA document.

Click to view attachment

https://workmanship.nasa.gov/lib/insp/2%20b...quirements.html
See section 2.01 for source of the quote and the graphic

Totally understand the move to avoid the Deutsch Autosport connector.

Nice to see you using proper sealing shrink wrap too.

Wiring is another top notch touch that is going to set your car above the usual hack and whack resto-mods out there. Really nice! Everytime I view your thread I'm blown away.

How many sets of barrel crimp tools do you now own? As a former electronics tech that used to work on multi-pin connectors just like that, the inner geek in me really enjoyed the precise ratchet sound and click that the barrel crimp tools made. Having a whole bench of just the right tool for each connector style was a luxury I no longer have but still envy!

Nice wiring

@tazz9924 - I wish I was that smart/able to remember those sorts of details. Copy paste on this one - and I'll happily admit it. For better or worse, I find that since the internet, I only seem to memorize the stuff I regularly need to know... Crap! I've become Googlezied!

@Superhawk996 - Pardon my edit to your original post. Just trying to save space! Thanks for your kind words. Having seen my share of modded cars, it's interesting that the wiring isn't more often "featured". Yes, I know, "hidden" seems to be the thing. But a tidy set of harnesses is, to me, a thing of beauty. Anyway...
On the crimp tools, I think I'm up to around seven pair, overall with two that'll do the barrel crimps.
I'm about to break out the DMC AFM8 for the first time to do the Mil-Spec connector work! Excited and nervous at the same time.

Back in the day we had tech manuals that specified part numbers, tool number, and in some cases, info on crimp tool settings. Not terribly hard to figure out, but, avoided trial and error set up, especially when under pressure when equipment was down.

Have some spare pins on hand & then have some fun!

Im in the same boat my friend

Left turn signal circuit splice crimped then sealed with SCL.

If there's anything more boring than pictures about wiring, it just may be a video about it. You can't get this ~3 minutes back so...Don't say you weren't warned!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDhEbbw7qhI

I only need five 12v battery hot connections so I used a 6-pin Deutsch DT connector.
Here are the back and front with the needed harness sheathed in DR25, the connector end sealed with SCL and the connector mounted to a clip on the fuse block mount.
Pretty tidy, IMO. And yes, as always, overkill for a street car. But there you go.

And temporarily mocked up in the car.
I'll be adding another similar harness to this to support the needed ignition hot circuits.
Getting there!

Man....this wiring is the bomb! I really need to get my butt up to Petaluma to see Chris. I want to talk to him about a really small wiring project.....

@Cairo94507 - Michael, The Red Barn is always open for you, my friend! Happy to help in any way I can, just let me know when and what you need. Hope you're quickly and happily settling in to your new place.

For fellow Wordle fans, I'm no spoiler so I waited a day, but yesterday's word was about as timely as they come!

@tygaboy have you touched racerbenz lately?

@tazz9924 - No RacerBenz work. The Red Barn only has room for one car at a time so the Benz is in the house garage until the 914 is back running. I'll post on the GrassRoots build thread as soon as I get back to it.

I just started posting stuff on grm and i remembered you had racerbenz on there.

Well, it's done. My fire wall has a hole in it. Measured a lot, used a 1.5" RotaBroach hole cutter. Great tool. Highly recommended for cutting holes in sheet.
That said, the bulkhead connector needs a hole that's just over 1.5" and has a flat spot at the top that helps prevent the connector from spinning in the hole - the connector has a flat spot, too.
Anyway, I cut the 1.5" hole, used a file to create the needed flat spot then carefully opened up the hole with a barrel sander attachment on a pneumatic right angle grinder.
Open the hole but keep it flat at the top...

It worked! I aged 3 years doing it, but it worked.

Here's the hole and the connector in place, along with a brand new ECU harness that I chopped to rough length. This had better work!

Before I can sheath the various sections of wiring, I first need to have all the wires run to/from the appropriate locations. This means EVERYTHING has to be in place. One of the things I've been putting off is the seat heater wiring.
It's fun because I have to work out a way to disconnect the wiring from the seats in order to install/remove and make sure nothing gets pinched doing that - or simply adjusting them when they're in the car. Then there're the heater switches.

I ordered the seats with remote heater switches and wanted them to go in the removable console cover. After noodling on it for what seemed like hours, I realized they'd fit in the cup holder. This works out great because to remove the console cover, I just lift out the cup holder, unplug the lead to each switch and out comes the console.

I need to figure out a way to see these simple solutions sooner in my design process. And if anyone asks, that's a cup holder from the back seat of a 2004 Ram pickup. I have one and in looking at the cup holder, I thought, "that looks like it'd work in the 914 console..." It did!

Hey Chris- Love the seat heater switches in the cup holder. Very clean.

Tool Whore ALERT:
These are Ideal StripMaster "Standard" strippers. Yes, I cheaped out and went with their least expensive model (still a bit pricey). Don't pick on me, they work really well.

They also support the adjustable stop you see on the right side. This is a must have when it comes to the Mil-Spec and AutoSport connectors as the terminals require a very precise strip length.

A couple test strips to get it set correctly and from then on, it's like a production line!

I'll say it again: Having the right tool(s) makes all the difference.

Some sensors must use shielded cable to protect the signal from any interference. I have shielded cable for the cam, crank and O2 sensors and the DBW throttle body. When using a bulkhead connector, the shield itself must be terminated to an appropriate wire and contact at the connector. Then on the other side, the reverse needs to happen: wire back to shield.

The short bit of unshielded wire this creates doesn't introduce a significant risk of corrupting the signal, particularly in my case, where the connector isn't close to anything that generates electrical noise.

Anyway, the technique for this is to crimp the shield to a wire that points "backwards", then flip things around, trim off the excess shield and seal the crimp joint with a length of SCL.

I took a few tries to get that tiny, tiny open barrel crimp into the tool and both bits of conductor into it... old eyes aren't the best for this sort of work! One side of one cable done, the rest to go.

I'm waiting on a few parts before I can finish the PMU/interior wiring harness routing so decided I'd try my hand at sheathing a section of harness that was ready for that step. In this case, it's the forward section of the chassis harness that runs the headlights, fog lights, running lights, signals and horn.
First, get the wires nice and tidily organized. There's a product called Kapton tape that works wonders. It's very thin yet incredibly strong and leaves no residue when/if you need to remove it. You can see some there in various places on the exposed wires.
Once organized, measure the harness for diameter and use the closest sized DR-25 heat shrink. In this case, things measured out to use 3/8".
Get the DR-25 over the wires. This is eased greatly by using isopropyl alcohol. I had none.
It took a bit but I got it done.

Then it's sheath any separate branches that are ready, as well as the branch point itself.

Route the covered harness through the chassis, terminate/pin the wires and complete that side of each connector. It's best practice to add a cable tie at any branch point as a final bit of strain relief insurance.

Final point, in case you noticed: You can see I stopped the DR-25 just behind the radiator. That's because there is a branch point where the harness splits for the right/left side of the car's circuits. I'll feed the sheathing up each side's wiring to meet where I ended it today.

Awesome stuff! The seat heaters are just perfect.

I’m real curious how those strippers function, does it slice the wire lengthways like it looks or is it something else?

Nice job with the sheathing. So many folks try to create strain relief out of the stuff and then it does exactly the opposite by actually stressing the transition into the connector.

Well done!

They cut circumferentially like conventional stoppers they grip and pull away the wire leaving only the waste jacket. Really awesome products, albeit a bit expensive. Cheaper than the circular barrel DMV crimper though.

Looking great Chris!!

@Andyrew - Quick demo of how this style stripper works starts at 3:00.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbvxskRNoe0

All of it has been first rate work. Your whole build has been like educational TV. Can't wait to see how it comes out, but it will be like the end of M.A.S.H.

@Shivers - Thanks for the compliment. I've said it before and will repeat here:
Virtually everything I've done on this build has been a "first time" attempt for me. This wiring stuff is no exception. I mentioned earlier that I signed up for HP Academy's online training courses and have poured over all their wiring offerings. Invaluable, to say the least.
Hopefully, I've helped others be a bit less apprehensive about trying something new on their builds.

Ahead of pinning the bulkhead connector, I configured/verified and tested all the connections from the ECU plugs to the wire ends. This was also a chance to start preparing some of the formal ECU-to-bulkhead-connector wiring documentation.
I figured this will help ease any concerns the next owner may have about what's what, harness-wise.

Ahhhh got it. Your pic made it look like just blades vertically but they are circular cutouts for the wire.

Makes sense

The Holley engine harness is wrapped with the split nylon covering but has nothing going on right at the connectors. These are the two main plugs for the ECU and you can see it's just wire into the connector. Not bad... but certainly not good enough!

So I sourced what's called a "backshell" that fits quite snugly over the back of each connector and provides a lip for heat shrink boots. These connectors are now all but sealed and the wires are fully strain relieved and far more protected.
Way mo' betta.

What's taking me far longer than I'd expected is working out the routing for each section of harness. In the end, I opted to poke a hole in the corner of the console cover and route all the "front of car" ECU-related circuits down and out the side of the tunnel.
The two white connectors you see there power the seat heater. I still have a few more wires to run and then it's on to sheathing/pinning/testing/booting the ECU-to-bulkhead connector.
Completing that will be a major milestone. Gotta admit, I'm a little nervous.

Ahead of pinning the bulkhead connector, I decided to review a specific HP Academy training module about the process. Glad I did because they called out a situation I was going to face: multiple shield-to-insulated wire splices at the bulkhead connector. I'll have four of them. One each for the DBW throttle body, O2 sensor, cam and crank sensors.

This can be problematic in that things get pretty crowded in that area so (as they say!) size matters!

There's a product that helps in a case like this: a solder sleeve. It's just what it sounds like: a bit of heat shrink with a low-melt solder built in! Simply prep the wire ends, slip them in and use the heat gun to heat shrink and melt the solder. It's nice because the red color around the solder dissipates to show it's been appropriately melted.

So OK, I lied. Turns out there will be a bit of solder in the harness. The good news is that this is "approved" at the motorsport level because the product is well proven and with the Kapton tape AND sealed boot, the chances of a failure are almost zero. Well past what I need for my application, in any case.

For your viewing pleasure, here's a solder sleeve "before and after:

I decided to start with pinning the DBW cable. It's seven conductors plus the shield.
It was also the first time using the DMC crimp tool. I'll get a video of that later but it works a treat!

But for now, here's my first foray into the world of mil-spec. So far, so good.

But then things got a bit messier.
I'm getting better with every "strip, wire into terminal, crimp, test, insert into connector" and it's satisfying if not tedious work. Here, I got the all the crank sensor connections pinned. Only about 45 more wires to go!

And if you're anywhere near the age of most of us typical 914 owners, keep a magnifying glass handy! Everything about this is TINY, from the pinout labeling on the connectors to the terminals, to the 20 and 22 ga wires...

At my age, as soon as I start working with small bits, I put one of these on.
https://www.amazon.com/Donegan-OptiVisor-He...776071&th=1

@bkrantz and @tygaboy Bob & Chris- I had to laugh at Bob's posted link....I thought I was really old because I bought a similar pair of those "cheater" headband lenses a while ago with LED lights on them. I guess when you get to a certain age......

One side of the connector complete! I learned a lot and thankfully, got pretty efficient at the process by the time I was done with what you see here. It still took me the better part of today to get to this point.
I made a couple mistakes and had a few do-overs but overall, I'm happy with this first effort. I'll get better from here!

Next is a full pin-to-pin test and documentation validation for this section of the harness. Assuming all is well, it's time to recover the sheathing (that's the official term for heat shrinking the heat shrink!), recover the 90 degree boot and seal this thing up!

And yes, I could have just used a grommet and passed the uncut harness through that hole in the fire wall. But what fun would that have been?

Awesome!
Learning keeps us Young

All needed connections complete and tested. No issues with any of the connections!
Next, I worked out the angle I wanted the wires to exit the connector and used Kapton tape to secure and support everything.

Next was to recover the DR-25 sheathing and the 90 degree boot. I probably should have video'd the process but to be honest, this was my first time and I decided I'd just focus on the process. There will be other opportunities to capture this stuff so until then, here's what it looks like when it's done and installed. I have to say, it's crazy how tidy this makes things. It really looks the business!

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this first effort. I'll admit that this level of wiring and "finish work" had me a little intimidated when I started. Turns out that, like most other stuff, it's not too bad once you get a bit of experience.

So, if you're thinking of trying something new, I vote "go for it!"

A bit hard to see but with the seat all the way back, it's all good. No interfernce, just like I'd measured/planned!

Beautiful work Chris.

I am exhausted. I've learned that wiring requires absolutely 100% of my attention, at least given where I am on the learning curve. After nearly two back-to-back days of effort, I finished the ECU-to-bulkhead harness, including the DBW cable to the pedal.
Everything is tested, fully sheathed and booted. And I'm BEAT. Amazing how sitting in one place can be so tiring!
That said, I'm pretty happy with how it all turned out, especially since this was my first go at all of this.
I have a number of lessons learned and I'd do a couple things differently, were I to do it again. But in all, I'm calling it a success.

And the best part? After all's said and done, this is what everyone will be able to see of all that work... And even the ECU is getting a cover so that'll be hidden, too.
But as with a lot of other areas on this build, it may not be obvious or visible, but I'll know it's there!

Very tidy and professional Chris.

Great looking seat! If I was 30 years younger I would put them in my car.