Prepping for wire diet

[Blwalker105]

I've had a piece of wire and a few plastic connectors soaking in mineral spirits for a few weeks as a sort of test. Can't see or feel any changes to them. I have my grotesque, entire wiring harness in a big plastic bin. Anybody have feelings on my idea of marinating the entire thing in about five gallons of the stuff for a couple days to clean it and soften up all the tape and goo?

[UnhipPopano]

My guess is that you will end up with a big mess. Try a rag and some inexpensive lighter fluid for cleaning the wires off.

[STiPWRD]

You will end up cleaning a bunch of the corrugated loom and electrical tape - the first things that will be removed. After getting that stuff off you'll see that the harness isn't really that dirty. The engine side of the harness might be a bit dirty and the tape and loom might have cracks in it, mine did. I'd use some alcohol to wipe that down. I ended up wrapping the engine loom with fresh electrical tape cuz mine was shot.

[edwardb]

I wouldn't be dipping or soaking that harness. Who knows what the real long term effect might be. I have found Goo Gone Gel is far and away the best product for cleaning up wiring harnesses, removing electrical tape adhesive, etc. Make sure it's the gel version. Not regular Goo Gone. For whatever reason, the gel seems to work better. It's available at Home Depot and Walmart, among others.

[phil1734]

You'll need far more than 5 gallons to cover even half the harness pre-diet.

In addition, I'll second what others have said in that once you remove the sheathing you'll probably find that 95% of the harness is actually pretty clean. The only parts that have disgusting amounts of e-tape are the joints, and these are several layers deep. So you can soak them and turn the entire thing into a nasty soup, or remove it by hand and then clean any remaining residue off the wires with a cleaner. Not to mention that if you haven't already dieted it - depending on options - something like 60% of the wires and joints go away anyway so you'd be cleaning them for nothing.

[Hindsight]

I wouldn't use any solvents or cleaners.

Remove ALL the tape and loom covering. Wear latex gloves and use a sewing seam ripper to remove the tape+loom without having to painstakingly unwind it all: https://www.amazon.com/Plastic-Handl.../dp/B0082JOTVC (buy a few of them because they will occasionally break on you).

As others have mentioned, the harness won't be that dirty after removing the tape and loom. You can use a little goof-off on a rag to clean up the connectors, if you must.

After dieting, you can re-loom it using flexo-braid, or the corrugated stuff (if you go corrugated, ensure you use the nylon stuff instead of the poly stuff because nylon has a much better temperature rating). I prefer the corrugated stuff completely wrapped with 3M electrical tape for areas where the harness could get wet, and the flex-braid stuff for inside the cabin. The reason is that the flex braid stuff looks cool and clean but I don't personally feel it offers much protection for the wires.... a bit of abrasion protection, but little protection against UV and no protection against heat, chemicals/oils, and moisture.

[Bob_n_Cincy]

I have done 2 harnesses from rust belt cars with over 100k on each.
After removing al the covering, the wires were clean.
Soaking the harness in a solvent might spread the adhesive all over everything.
Bob

[Blwalker105]

Thanks all! These insights are what make this one of the best forums out there.

[Bob_n_Cincy]

These are the tools I use to remove the covering off of the harness. The most important tool is the little "seam ripper" on the left.

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