Please Help me I’m desperate

Thats how I feel was well. Much less technical than soldering, but also very easy to over or under-crimp which leads to issues later on. Luckily this is inside, so moisture exposure is very limited

 

When the passenger side headlight harness burned up and melted in my tundra from all the salt spray collecting on it, i got a new light socket with the longest wires i could find, and spiced them into what was left in the existing harness using steel butt connectors i could solder, then putting heat shrinkable tubing over them. Repair was good as before...never had any issues.

 

Wow that's tough!
I'd ask around local car clubs and find someone that knows how to repair, they're out there, but choose wisely.
I also hope you didn't hit the side curtain airbag.

 

A repaired wire is not always as good. I've run dealership parts departments for over 30 years. If any of the airbag wiring is damaged it should be replaced, not repaired. Toyota and Honda (not sure how many other manufacturers) no longer sell repair harnesses for air bags as they learned that the repair connections almost always change the resistance in the wire. This can have an effect on the split-second functioning of your life-saving equipment. Having an airbag go off 1 second after you hit the dash doesn't do you much good, does it?

 

Can we get a thread title update. Help is reserved for people who actually need it.

 

If you feel you need a new harness then searching junkyards will probably be the fasted way to get one. From my experience a properly crimped non-insulated butt splice followed by a 10 lb pull test and heat shrink tube will never be an issue. Save yourself the time and effort and repair it and move on.

This is how repairs to damaged harnesses are made on the equipment I work on. I have never seen a failure in a previous repair and this equipment is severe duty, salt, road grime, rain, violent vibration tested for hundreds of kilometers a day.

 

Unless you have slack in the individual wires I would suggest but splices. To solder those wires, you would need .25" overlap with a finished product that doesnt stress the joint. Seeing as this harness has been routed and secured, I doubt you have that kind of room. Extending the wires would work, but you would have twice the solder joints/failure points. Butt-splices and cover with heat shrink will last a life time.

 

Good point, repairing airbag wiring is not a good idea, same with sourcing a used assembly from salvage.

 

FWIW, consider this....

Butt joints will certainly work. The problem with butt joints isn't with 1, its with multiple in the same location. The "collection" becomes bulky making it difficult to stuff into tight areas.

The solder/shrink reduces the bulk. If done neat and tight, the wire only gains in diameter by the thickness of the shrink tube wall. The "collection" is less bulky and easier to stuff into tight areas. Another advantage is the solder/shrink can be performed on the really small wires like the wires on speed sensors.

 

Thin, mil-spec butt splice with enviormental sleeve. can have plenty of these without the bulk of the bigger mechanical splices. I actually like these WAAAYYY better then the bigger ones for the exact reason you bring up


https://www.newark.com/raychem-te-c...C-GUSA-GEN-Shopping-NewStructure-Top-Products

 

Send this guy a PM
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/2016-tacoma-parts-oem.737941/

 

82171-04870 isn’t a service part number per the epc (so, for production only). Though I’m not an epc guru, it doesn’t appear that you can purchase that harness. Looks like that’s for power to the dome lights … that’s it.

 

Post or PM me your vehicle details and I’ll get you the info you need.

As for repairs, someone manufactured the harness to begin with. Using the same or equivalent methods to repair the harness will result in a harness that is just as reliable as the original. Butt splices and solder aren’t necessarily equivalent.

If you wanted it to be as-new, replace each damaged wire end to end with new terminals. If you want to get close, particularly in this application, I would remove the looming, and use open barrel non-insulated crimps, then reroute/reloom to ensure adequate strain relief. Offset the crimps if possible, but you may need to add wire and the number of crimps increases doing this obviously.

OE’s do use butt splices as approved repair methods, but I would suggest a pull test if you don’t have the exact crimping tool specified. That’s always a good idea though.

Jeff

 

You guys do realize solder is used in all the circuits on a pcb? Unless OP woefully misunderstands the proper method of making a joint, then there's no detrimental effect in using solder in a one or two wires repair / any number of wires with enough room to make offset solder joints and splices.

The number of wires broken didn't appear in the pic last night when I suggested solder. Upon looking at the amount of wires you managed to go through I wouldn't use connectors but just replace the wires and repin your connectors / junkyard dive, whichever is cheaper and / or achievable.

 

If he cant get any slack to be able to overlap the wires by .25" solder wont work unless the wires are extended. In that case a splice would be better.

 

Are you referring to solder joints and a piece of wire spliced in to it? Usually there's a good amount of slack in harnesses. Yes you wouldn't have fun working with wires that barely have any slack when attempting to repair in the vehicle and obviously you don't want to have them under significant tension if repairing it on a bench and replacing after.

 

get a good electrician to replace the sections of wire an solder them properly. it should last forever. no need to replace the entire harness.

they don't replace the entire electrical grid when a power line goes down. They just repair the section.

 

I think after counting at least 13 broken wires I'm more thinking packaging is the most difficult factor - solder joints will have to be offset and even then fitting all of them into the a pillar will be a bit tight imo.

FWIW I've worked on electric guitars and trucks for 19 years and 6 years, respectively.

 

I was refering to a mechanical splice, However the method of solder splicing a wire would typically be a lap solder which could then be covered in heat shrink. Some harnesses have slack and some dont. Most people just learning to solder will solder wick the shit out of the wires making the repair very weak, will it work? sure, its just brittle as hell. If he cant solder already, just crimp it.

 

Sorry but I completely disagree and after working on any car with quick crimps, butt joint connectors, and any other of those "quick fixes" they're simply an inferior solution and are a red flag for shitty work on a vehicle.