This is a read-only archive of the old Madabout Kitcars forum. New posts and replies are no longer possible, but every thread is still here to browse and read.
Hi guys, I'm back from holiday and back in the garage.
I haven't done a great deal since getting back, apart from mounting the rad - but I did get the engine loom down from the shelf where it's languished for the past 18 months or so.
A lot of the sheathing on the loom (not the individual cores, but the outer wrapping) is in a pretty bad state - it's breaking up as it's become britle with age.
I'm planning on stripping it all off and re-covering it all - but I'm unsure as to what to use. Should I use non adhesive loom tape, cloth tape, good ole' sticky insulating tape or some sort of split loom? Has anyone else had to do this?
Whatever the general consenus is, Frosts will be getting some money chucked at them I guess....
We used non adhesive loom tape to re wrap ours. In heat critical locations we've added some heat wrap stuff (fibre glass covered in ali and sticky on one side)
CBS sell a huge roll of loom tape I think.
Also too the opportunity to re-route a few things so they fit better in our bay. Most notably the coil.
Good to see you back in the garage.
I managed to keep all of my loom all in one piece in the engine bay. The bits I did strip inside the car under the dash, I just used ordinary black insulating tape or plain black insulating sleeving.
Vehicle Wiring Products do a great range of sleeving and lots of other useful electrical stuff.
Well, I've got the loom tape from CBS, along with a roll of self amalgamating to finish off the ends of the loom tape.
I've also cleaned up the loom somewhat before stripping off the old sheathing.
Thing is, I've got some odd connectors on the end where the large white(ish) connector for the ECU is.
One of them is a three conductor one, and looks factory fit. The other is a double conductor snap together block (male and female ends of a multiway block) but only has one conductor in it. It has a blue wire from one direction, and a brown from the other. This looks a little odd - does / did anyone else have one of these? I'll try and get a photo of it tonight.
I'm tempted to just leave it as is - apart from making a more permenant connection which can be buried under loom tape and forgotton about.
Jason,
I don't recall seeing that on my loom and I have had a quick look at the pictures of my loom before I re-fitted it and can't see anything the same. There is some other loose unconnected connector on my loom about this area which I think are used if you have an automatic gearbox or something like that. It might have been a break point for an immobiliser?
However, it does look like a standard BMW connector, so I would just bind it in the loom tape and forget about it.
The 3 pin plastic connector is probably for an accessory. I've had a look through my wiring diagrams and found anything yet.
A brown wire is usually earth, the other plug could be for telling the ECU to do something. Our engine loom was wired up to make the ECU think that the AC was always on, this was just a messy patch job which I un-did. That dropped the RPM down to where it is supposed to be.
We also have an extra connector on our loom, I will have a look tomorrow to see what it looks like compared to yours. I've just tied it back and left it alone.
It may be worth asking on e30zone, forum member called Brianmoooore.
I've posted on e30zone as per Rich's suggestion. Initial thoughts are that the 3 pin plug is for the OBC - which was fitted to my donor. So I guess I can remove or forget that one.
Still unclear as to the single connector though...
I had a look at our loom, we do have an extra 3 pin plug near the ECU connector however it look a little different and the colours are
Red/Blue
Green
Brown
Just looking at the big connector, is that not for the ABS rather than the ECU? Our ECU connector has 3 rows of pins and is black. It could be that our donor cars have different wiring depending on the age.
The ABS plug from our donor looks like the one you have there. 2 rows of pins in white. We are no using the ABS so the plug is not in the car. I had a look through old loom to find the ABS plug; it has no extra connectors.
Yeah, it's an older donor than yours, Rich. Both the ABS and the ECU had the same style plugs on them (2 row multiway like the one in the pics). I believe it's for Motronic 1.1
If you haven't already done it.... Best thing to use for re-making the loom is "propper" loom wapping tape which is a stretchy PVC stuff but non- adhesive. Insulating tape is not good to use as after a couple oy years it tends to get all sticky and also the adhesive doesn't last long with the heat from the engine leaving you with a gooey mess.
I used this plus plenty of heat shrink tubing which is wonderfull for all sorts of jobs. All available from Vehicle Wiring Products.
PS - I also have two extra connectors on the loom next to the ECU - but they look nothing like yours! Hope they aren't essential as they don't go anywhere at the moment.
Instead of heatshrink, I used self amalgamating tape to finish of the ends and to reinforce where the loom splits.
As for the other connectors - I ended up nipping them off and terminating the wires in the loom for the three way OBC plug, and the brown - to blue connector was removed and the wires joined with crimp connector. I tried covering the plugs with the loom tape, but it didn't lie very well over them...
