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October 19, 2012

What's in a name?


It's a universal kit called "It's a Snap" and came with the Rod I'm currently working on. Seems pretty good to me, though in doing some research on these kits it would seem "Painless" is the Cadillac of aftermarket harnesses and this one is a mid-line brand. Having said that, I'm not sure what else you'd need: it has a full fuse box, wires for each vehicle section (dash, interior, engine and front end and rear end). All the wires are labelled every foot with where they go. It even has a couple different clips that mate up to either a GM, Ford or Mopar steering column. This rod has a GM column, so I just had to use the male connector that came with and line up the same color wires to mate up with the functions coming from the column (lights, blinkers, horn, etc). It also has a horn relay and blinker (flasher) diodes.



The time consuming part is going to be cutting and connection the wire ends to all the things they control on the front end - from the engine management system harness, head lights, taillights, alternator and gauges - which will take the most work for sure. I was thinking I'll cut a foot or two of the correctly labelled wires, wire the gauges on the bench and then match the pigtails together in the car.

In this case I have to match up the engine management harness with the aftermarket one:





Today I also got the passenger side window powered up and even though still in the "Mock Up" stage I like to clean up what I can as I go, including polishing the window chrome before putting it all together:



With this project though, the aftermarket harness install is just one piece of the puzzle. As I said above, it al has to be married to the 5.0L EFI harness, a somewhat complicated Vintage Air set-up, as well as power windows, power locks and electric wipers! Here's what some of that looks like today:







Don't forget to check out my website at www.E-tekRestorations.com !