Swapping the Engine in the '67 F250 Part 9

This post is a bit of a misnomer, because it's a deviation from the engine swap, but it's part of the same project, and it has to be done before I can try to start the engine. The background is that I had a lot of electrical problems with the truck when I first got it, and ultimately I decided to replace the wiring harness. 

The first step was to get rid of the original wiring. I pulled the instrument cluster and radio, and the glovebox liner, and that made most of it accessible. I had already pushed both looms from the engine compartment back into the interior when I was doing the painting. 

After that I had to pull the headliner and the door panels, but fortunately it was not necessary to remove the seat or the carpet. This is what a fifty-eight (58) year old wiring harness looks like: 

The replacement I choose came from American Autowire, which has several pros and cons. Firstly, this is not a replacement for the stock harness - that is neither a positive or a negative, just a fact. Instead, this harness uses modern components, a modern fuse box and serves a one (1) wire alternator. It also comes with masses of extra circuits that I will never need, like dual fuel tanks, electric fans, and neutral safety switch* etc. 

First the pros:

1. Much easier to install than the awful Painless (make that painful!) harness I installed in the Mustang. 

2. The instructions are super detailed and everything you need is there in the kit including all the connectors and grommets etc.

3. The kit includes all the replacement headlight, ignition and wiper switches etc., so old crap like the dimmer switch shown below can be replaced with shiny new parts:

4. It's an expensive item, but you get what you pay for. The components are all good quality and the individual wires are all plenty long enough for custom placement - this is useful if you want to deviate from the factory wiring locations and was definitely not the case with the Painless kit where the tail light wires did not reach to the trunk!

Now the cons:

1. Every connector needs to be crimped with one or other of a pair of proprietary tools which add another $200 to the price of the kit. A mate in BAMA did offer to lend me the tools, but I wanted to have my own for if/when I need to make modifications to the wiring.

2. That is really the only con....it's a super kit.

The main loom is secured behind the instrument cluster with two (2) clamps:

The appropriate sections of the harness are then threaded into the correct locations:

The very first connections were made at the fuel tank sender; the fuel tank is located immediately behind the seat.

After that it was just a matter of working through the kit, starting at the dashboard:

The kit does not plug directly to any of the OEM components, so it would NOT be a good choice for a stock restoration. For example, the turn signal connector in the photo below must be cut off and replaced with the connector from the kit in order to plug in to the harness. I imagine this is because Ford owns the copyright on all the original connectors. 

At this point the interior wiring is complete, and everything bar the instrument cluster has been re-installed. The cluster is a PITA to install, so I'm waiting until all the circuits have been tested before I do that. 

(* yep, you can start this truck when it's in gear!).