Can someone please explain the best way to remove an entire 3 door wiring loom please.
All the seats, carpet and dash etc are out of the car and all the wires which run to the back of the car - i.e the rear lights etc have been disconnected and are just coiled up at the front of the car with all the rest of the loom that sits behind the dash. As for under the bonnet the engine has been completely removed so the majority of the wires have been disconnected but were not really sure where to go from here, want to be as careful and neat as possible as the loom is going into another car.
I have been informed that the loom seperates into 3 parts and can be removed via the fuse box mounting hole, is this right? I find it hard to believe that all these wires behind the dash will fit out throught the fuse box hole!
Any help will be much appreciated, thanks.

 

yeah - remove everything through the fuse box hole

 

Should i seperate the loom first then as ive been told it splits into 3 parts. Is it quite staightforward to remove the loom?

 

pm ryan on here mate - Jon's info is sound and ryan makes looms from scratch

 

It is straightforward to remove. If you are not familiar with wiring, it is best to unplug as little as possible, and make a note of any connectors you do unplug.

There are 3 bulkhead grommets. All the wiring under the bonnet must end up inside the car, so push the grommets in, and the wiring will follow.

 

Ah right that sounds a bit easier than feeding all the wiring from behind the dash through to under the bonnet which is how i had been told to do it by somebody else!
I will try and have a go later in the week, may have to come on here and ask a few more questions if i get any problems with it.
Some of the loom under the bonnet is damaged from where the car had a front ender, meaning the rad, intercooler, headlights and power steering pump were completely destroyed along with most of the wiring attached to them so will either have to look into repairing it or getting a new under bonnet loom made up.

 

Once the whole loom is in the car, it must then pass through the fuse box hole to under the bonnet. It really isn't hard to do. It's easier if you undo the 4 nuts holding down the fuse box - it makes the hole bigger, rather than unclipping the fuse box from its container. The nuts are reached from inside the car at the 4 corners of the fuse box.

 

Just a quick question, why does the wiring all have to go out through the fuse box hole rather than just lifting it out through the door? Is it just because the fuse box will not fit throught the fuse box hole to be able to get it inside the car?

 

Yes mate the box wont go in the car

 

Finally got round to trying to remove it this evening, we labelled everything up and fed the looms from the bonnet through into the car, unclipped all the loom off of the bulkhead and unclipped the fuse box so now ready to feed the loom out through the fuse box hole but the light is going now so it will have to wait until tommorrow.
We have also realised that the car the loom is being removed from has a different style fuse box from the car the loom will be going into, some 3 doors had the box held in with 4spring clips and some were held with 4 nuts and bolts, at a quick glance it also appears that the fuse box holes are different sizes to each other (although havent actually measured them yet.)
Anyone ever encountered this before? Whats the best way to get around it? Will we need to get hold of the other type of fuse box and connect it to our loom? If that is the case then im thinking that it may be easier to just disconnect the loom from the box now rather than messing about feeding it all out just to have to change the box when it is fitted to the other car.

 

I would, if necessary, unplug all the individual fuse wires and relay holders to change the fusebox, but I wouldn't recommend that you even try to do so - you don't seem too confident in wiring. It would be a daunting task.

The fusebox is in 2 parts - the "box" with the 4 mounts surrounds the part that contains the fuses and relays. To seperate the 2 parts, gently spring the sides apart (and more brutally if "gently" doesn't work, but be careful not to crack it). If you need to you can change one "box" for the other you've got to get around the diffences in mounting, provided the 2 boxes are the same size - suck it and see.

Springing the "box" and removing it by sliding it off the loom will at least allow you to offer it up to the car to check that it mounts OK if the hole sizes are different.

 

the box itself should just be clipped into place in the holder so you should be able to just swap them out fron one to the other

i've got one sitting at home on the shelf and, if mother hasn't sent it to be recycled this morning, i'll send you a pic of what it looks like

it really is a peace of cake to do

 

Thats what i thought but ive since realised its not quite as easy as that, i went down the local breakers and managed to find another sierra with the fusebox holder i need (the one thats held in with 4 bolts) thinking i would be able to just swap the holders over like you have suggested, i have now realised though that not only are the fuse box holders different but also the actual fusebox itself as the holder i need to use which i got from the breaker is not deep enough to hold the fusebox that is connected to my original loom so once again im a bit stuck as to what to do.
The only things I can think of is Firstly to either try and cut off the base of both holders and try and bond the base of the new holder to the sides of my original holder so i can mount it to the car correctly but i have a feeling this could end up looking like a bit of a bodge or Secondly to remove each individual wire from my original box and re-attatch them to the new box, only problem with that is the layout of the 2 fuseboxes is not the same so the fusebox wiring diagrams would no longer tally up correctly.... but i suppose that wouldnt be the end of the world, it would just be nice to have it right!
Any suggestions welcome!

 

you may be able to remove the internal platse of the fusebox and replace them with the later type, keeping your plug positions and internals, but putting them in a shiney new casing

 

The 3dr shell with the 4 bolts holding the fusebox is a 1989 made replacement shell, where as the one with the clips is an original 1986 spec production shell

The replacement shells used the later saff type bulkhead with the 4 bolt fusebox, you will also find the boot internal light is also smaller on the replacment shell

 

meant to say what people do is slice down one side of the outer case of the later type 4 bolt fusebox, then remove the outer casing of the original type clipped fusebox and then house the fuseboard in the later box, glueing back the join to make it watertight

 

The outer case of the later type fusebox is not deep enough to house the fuseboard from the earlier type of fusebox, this is what i tried to explain in my last post but having read that post back to myself i realise i made it a bit longwinded so it probably didnt make much sense lol!
There is 1 row of relays on the earlier fuseboard which sit higher than the rest of the relays and fuses meaning the earlier fusebox has to be deeper to allow for this, however on the later type fuseboard all the relays and fuses sit at the same height meaning the later box doesnt need the extra depth.
I have removed the earlier outer casing from my loom and fed the entire loom through the hole of the later outer casing (so as i wouldnt need to cut and re-join it) and tried to fit the earlier fuseboard into it but the fuseboard will not sit low enough to allow the lid to be put on due to the height of the relays.
The only thing i can think is that maybe there was different versions of the later type of fusebox, i removed this one from a J plate 5 door hatchback sierra think it was a 2.0 LX or something.

 

can you not just make bigger holes in the fusebox location area to resite the original fusebox then?

 

It will fit I promise as I have done it - what you need to do is twist the original fuseboard around 90 degrees so that the big red relay if at the back of the board,then drop it down into the outer casing it will then be low enough to fit under the lid

 

Well ive managed to get the fuseboard sitting in the outer casing but its a very tight fit...... as in i actually had to push down on the lid to get it to close properly rather than just clipping it on, is this how you had yours fitted or did you get it sitting in there quite nicely? The wires that go into the fuseboard are quite jammed up underneath, bit worried about them cutting through where they rub so tightly against the hole in the bulkhead.
Also didnt have to mess around feeding the entire loom through the fusebox hole in the bulkhead as the old style fuseboard just about squeezes through the new style hole in the bulkhead so just poked it up through from inside the car, which was nice!