[DeTomaso] Wires between rear tail lights

[Rob Dumoulin]

Tom, your timing is perfect.

Yesterday was a perfect day:

   - Florida Gators got beat!
   - FSU demolished Miami! (I went to FSU)
   - Alabama (who beat the Gators last week) got beat by S. Carolina
   - UNC beat Clemson (My wife went to UNC)
   - I moved the rear wiring harness on #1488 to not be visible.

I posted a few weeks ago about how easy it was to move the wires along the
side of the trunk to the wheel well but waited until this weekend to do the
rest.  My starting point for this phase was the wire harness entered the
trunk through the factory hole where the side marker light wire used to exit
the passenger side. If you want to hide the wires going in on the Passenger
side and out to the Driver side marker light, you have to drill into the
wheel well from the passenger rear light cavity.  You have perfect access to
this area when the rear lights are removed.  I chose not hide those wires
for fear that water would get spun into the rear light assembly by the
tires.  Instead, I have the main wire harness entering from where the side
marker light would be supplied from and running the 4 inches or so to the
original hole where the passenger rear light was fed.  I also exposed the
side marker feeding light on the driver side the same way so as not to have
to drill into the weld area in the wheel well. Here's what I did.


   - Remove the tail lights, license plate assembly, and trunk release
   mechanism.
   - Document the wire positions in the plugs for the driver side rear
   lights and remove the wires from them using a jeweler's screwdriver.  You
   also have to remove the wires from the plug going to the driver side marker
   light.
   - Note which wires route where.
   - Feed all the wires into the passenger side rear light cavity (as stated
   above, I ran the harness on a short route in the engine bay instead of
   drilling a big hole in the wheel well).
   - Using a fish tape like you use to run electric wires in houses, feed
   the fish tape from the driver side light cavity across the top where the
   trunk release is, and over to the passenger side.  I had to flatten out my
   fish tape end because it was too bulky at first.
   - Using a dremel with a small wire brush, I polished all my electrical
   connections to remove 30 years of dirt and such.
   - I used blue painter tape to streamline the wire bundle where wires
   jutted out at 90 degrees for the license plate lights and such.  It makes
   fishing the wire much easier.
   - Carefully feed the wires as you pull the tape through.  This took me a
   bit to get it through until I flattened out my fish tape.
   - #1488 has access areas on either side of the trunk release area where
   you can run your fingers up and have access to the cavity.  You will need to
   reach up there and pull the wires through for the tranny, ground, and A/C
   wires.  These are where the ground, A/C wires, and Tranny wires can feed
   out.
   - The license plate wires should be accessible through the trunk release
   hole.  Just feed them through the right holes.
   - I ran the tranny wire along the A/C condenser and under the support
   brace to hide it and put loops on the condenser mounting screws to keep them
   in place.

It took me about 5 hours to do the whole thing counting breaks talking to a
neighbor, removing the old wire strap ties, grinding off the welds for them,
taking back ache brakes, admiring how much better it looked as I wondered
why Detomaso didn't do this to begin with, and cleaning up.

Rob


On Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 11:06 PM, Tom Borcich <tborcich at msn.com> wrote:

>
> I'm moving the wire harness and AC tube from the inside of engine bay on
> the passenger
> side to the wheel well, but was trying to figure out where to run the wires
> between the tail lights?
> Any suggestions or comments on how to clean up the wires?
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Tom
>
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-- 
Rob DuMoulin
904.476.8744
rob at dumoulins.net