Still here, still chugging away, still working on the wires. Blech. I was totally set on using the crimps, and ordered a whole bag of them. I thought 18-22 gauge would do, but what I got was huge. No good. For the record, I'm convinced that crimps are superior to solder-only in every way that counts. Speed, durability, reliability. Solder only wins on cost as far as I can tell. That said, I'm not worried about the shortcomings of soldering. My harness is not going to flex specifically at a joint. At a stretch of wire including the joint, maybe, but then the rest of the wire will do the bending first. And since I already had solder, a 100ft roll of shrink tube, and a couple days off work, I got busy.

Bob's advice to label each wire with where it goes AND the wire position number has paid off in spades already. Several connectors have the same color wire in more than one place!! I also gave up on putting the harness together on a board. I didn't have one handy, my Hyundai won't easily get one, and - most importantly - I realized the very high likelihood that I'd screw it up. So I'm doing it in the car. It's amazing to me how much of this thing is going to disappear just by making it fit, never mind getting rid of the stuff I don't want.