84 SVO Wiring

[teal95]

I got another SVO this week, an early 84. It has serious wiring issues in that many of the wire under the hood have the insulation falling off.

Is the wiring issue confined to under the hood (from the high temps) or will all of the wiring have the same issue?

I have a couple of wiring harnesses from 87/8 TC that I plan on using for parts. If I have to get into the harness I'll probably be updating it to an L series ECU.

steve

[billkandi]

That time frame is known for bad insulation on the wiring. My 84 RS Turbo has the same issue and I got a replacement from a guy on FB in one of the Fox pages there. He was parting a wrecked car like mine and the wiring was near mint. It had been wrecked with less than 50K miles. I got lucky.

[teal95]

I pulled the steering column cover because I wanted to see if the wiring issues were all of the wiring or just the wires under the hood. Of course as soon as I touched the wiring the ignition switch fell apart. But all of the wiring I could see looked good so I'm guessing it's the heat that kills the insulation. So I only have to rewire under the hood for now.

That does make me think that I probably need to inspect the wiring on my 84 GT turbo also.

[foot2floor]

My 83 Capri RS Turbo has the same issue. Yesterday I spent several hours reinforcing and taping up the drivers side harnesses. It seems green wires In that harness had the biggest issues. My theory is if they were the most overloaded and the heat from the wires ruined the insulation. Dunno

I also have a number of unidentified wires that I couldn’t find on the wiring diagrams which were dangling free by the starter solenoid. Anyone know what a brown wire might be for up by that area? I also have a black with white which has a open ended side connector on it. And then a red with a blue Cap connector ...just hanging out.

Not good!

we should start an ‘early Efi turbo wiring page’ because of how rare and yet poor quality these harnesses are.

[ccurtin]

I've looked at the 1986 wiring diagram here on the site to figure out things. It is much easier to follow than the 84 one. It includes diagrams of the connectors making it easier to figure out what some are.

The connectors and so far all the wire colors/stripe colors I've need to match on my 84 have matched the 86 diagram. Boost control being an obvious one the non-SVOs were missing.