How To Take It Out... ALL of it?

[RustCollector]

So I finally got to the stage of trying to clean up the wiring in my dash on my '88 Suburban. Over the poor girl's 34 years she's had an aftermarket stereo put in, an alarm system fully integrated with the power locks, lights, and an immobilizer, and someone put a trailer brake box in there that made all the other monkey wiring look professional, LOL.

I knew all this, but it's not until you're staring at the dash shell to make sense of it that it all comes into terrible focus.

I gotta yank it all out and get it on a bench just to figure out where to start. I got everything from the passenger side loose and out, but I'm struggling to get the clump of around the fuse box and the fuse box itself out. It's a rats nest of old and new tangled around the cluster brace, steering column, and fuse box.

Can anyone point me to some kind of write up of how to get the fuse box out and maybe where all the intended anchor points are for the harness so I can at least start there?

Attached is a sneak peek of my new nightmare

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[AuroraGirl]

by looks of it, maybe some pedals and rods and arems of things are sticking between where you are trying to pull things. Is your bulkhead undone and your everything else on dash as possible

 

[RustCollector]

Is your bulkhead undone and your everything else on dash as possible

If by bulkhead you mean the front face of the dash, that's a no.

But EVERYTHING is stripped out of it and off of it. Glove box, ash tray assembly, the entire climate control system including in the engine compartment, the ECU... everything is out. Only things still there are the pedals, column, and brake/hood cables... and mess of wires...

The mess isn't really tangled in the pedals and brackets, it's mainly the column, the large support brace, and right in front of the fuses. I literally can't see the top half or left side of the fusebox to even see how it's anchored because of the wall of loose wires, LOL.

 

[Turbo4whl]

......... she's had an aftermarket stereo put in, an alarm system fully integrated with the power locks, lights, and an immobilizer, and a trailer brake box...

I gotta yank it all out and get it on a bench just to figure out where to start. I got everything from the passenger side loose and out, but I'm struggling to get the clump of around the fuse box and the fuse box itself out. It's a rats nest of old and new tangled around the cluster brace, steering column, and fuse box.

All those extra wires added, running through support brace and column will prevent you from removing the complete harness. Those will need to be cut out first.

 

[AuroraGirl]

Also, if you got some graffers tape, or something like bandage wrap(not stick but can bind to self) athletic tape even in a pinch, or use some para cord... start WRAPPING circuits together, like, find the radio harness and just bind it after getting it unintertwined. Then find the modules you see hanging, bind them together. Just temporarily. Its to cut out the noise, so its bite size and not overwhelming
allows you to comfortably then establish what it all is, and then you can worry about undiong them in such a way to pull them out and maybe re-wrap them. You may have a situation like the radio with like 2 separate connectors or so maybe more, wrap connectors then wrap bundles. its not all going to mesh nice and perfect, but it will severely simplify what it is in front of you and help route it out

if you were a good welder my only recommendation is sawzall and a good traced line with some finagling of pass through devices like that releease handle

but you should just isolate the non-GM wires(YOU DONT NEED THOSE, RIGHT? WELL IF YOU REMOVE THEM, YOU DONT NEED THEM ANYMOREE!!!)

but here is my not your truck fuse box area:

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not so many.. you have much more but the idea is there maybe, who knows

 

[John Nes]

If you’re not any good at wiring, just pull the thing and get a direct replacement from American auto wire.

If you’re good with schematics and a soldering iron, just surgically remove it, untangle, re attach.

Personally, I’d detach the shared bolt going thru the bulkhead connector, then remove the bolts on the fuse block side, and try to get it out in one piece to untangle. It’s just a matter of slipping connectors thru the cracks and spaces in the dash. And making sure you disconnected everything.

Alternatively you could just get the snips and go crazy.

 

[AuroraGirl]

If the firewall needs any work, like truly, that would be a great way john to do things. The pass through, and a little bit of the energy at the end. I would not cut anything especially near a sealing passthrough that would go through the sealing area and I would only ever do so if it was something that was a time saver and this work needed to be done on the firewall anyway.
my gpa was... interesting and he removed the dash of this truck to strip it, I do believe. he bought a milwaukee tin snips , corded, and i would bet you that is where this carnage was from

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I have sold a piece of the dash to someone on here for the radio cut out, and I have obviously other parts that would be good. its not worth to try and fix and the only remote use would be someones custom rig but that roof being smushed and the floor needing work just makes it a time involved thing that you could have just bought another cab for the costs

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although, snipping the cab up made no sense considering he just threw it all in pieces on a scrap pile.... so i would have just done the area around the column.... that man..

 

[Grit dog]

If the firewall needs any work, like truly, that would be a great way john to do things. The pass through, and a little bit of the energy at the end. I would not cut anything especially near a sealing passthrough that would go through the sealing area and I would only ever do so if it was something that was a time saver and this work needed to be done on the firewall anyway.
my gpa was... interesting and he removed the dash of this truck to strip it, I do believe. he bought a milwaukee tin snips , corded, and i would bet you that is where this carnage was from

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I have sold a piece of the dash to someone on here for the radio cut out, and I have obviously other parts that would be good. its not worth to try and fix and the only remote use would be someones custom rig but that roof being smushed and the floor needing work just makes it a time involved thing that you could have just bought another cab for the costs

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although, snipping the cab up made no sense considering he just threw it all in pieces on a scrap pile.... so i would have just done the area around the column.... that man..

Wait…what were you trying to say?

 

[AuroraGirl]

Wait…what were you trying to say?

I would say late tired rambling based on some sentence structure strangeness and then also the normal ramble there too.

 

[Raider L]

@RustCollector,
Sorry this is so long, but...
I feel your pain! I did exactly what you are trying to do when I rebuilt my truck! By myself with no one like found here, back in 1994-95 I removed all that self adhesive tape from every wire from the turn signal lights in the front to the tail lights in the back, cleaned every single wire from front to back, did what @AuroraGirl suggested and grouped the wires that went to whatever and zip tied aircraft style in this case with those tiny little zip ties, aircraft factories use fiberglass string and wrap each bundle, spacing securing the wire and at points wrap five or six wraps and make a knot at the end, imagine that, so that it looked like a wire bundle that you'd order from one of those companies that make a whole harness. Then put it all back together again. I didn't remove the fuse block but did unbolt it from the firewall so I could see where every wire that came through, went. I then recovered the wire bundles, that needed it with that black plastic corrugated tubing, like the wires that went to the tail lights. Mostly the wires that were outside the cab.

The thing I discovered was whoever did the wiring at the factory did not route the wires through the fuse block the way the schematic showed it was supposed to be. So a wire that is, say, going to the light on the dash that is coming from the alternator came out of the fuse block at the wrong number. So if you want to trace that wire from the fuse block the first thing you notice is that number wire is the wrong color and the wrong size for it to be the alternator wire. I've yet to find that wire. It's buried in a bundle I didn't notice.

The first thing I did was, I had a factory maint. manual that had the full schematic in the electrical section, and took it to Office Depot and had them enlarge it big enough so it was easy to see all those little tiny lines and if you blink you loose your place and have to start all over again. That helped alot. I was able to see what went where so I didn't get anything going where it wasn't supposed to. If wires were over or between or under something and it looked like the factory had routed it that way, I did cut the wire but took it from where it was, cleared the obstruction, and soldered it back together again right away.

It's important that you remove all the tape from the bundles unless you can see that it's clear and not wrapped around something structural under the dash!!

Are you any good at soldering? Don't be afraid to do it. "Oh, my soldering looks like a big turd!" Heck, get some wire and practice, a lot! I'm a experienced school trained welder so soldering came natural to me. And the thing you need to do is if you do solder anything get you some strink wrap of varying diameters for different size wires and on every wire you resolder put the strink wrap on the wire BEFORE YOU SOLDER IT and cover that repair so the wires are protected.

TAKE YOUR TIME AND GO BY THE SCHEMATIC. And put it back the way YOU want it to be. It may not be factory but the next time you have a electrical problem you can go right to whatever the wire goes to and you won't have to fish through a *** of wire trying to find one wire. Break it up into logical groups of wires that go to several things that are the same like the wires going to your interior lighting, zip tie all those wires together, and so on. You understand.
Good luck!!

 

[Raider L]

And that birds nest of wire hanging out of the dash frame is the funniest thing I ever saw! I have to laugh because...been there, done that. And it wasn't very funny then when I started.

 

[RustCollector]

And that birds nest of wire hanging out of the dash frame is the funniest thing I ever saw! I have to laugh because...been there, done that. And it wasn't very funny then when I started.

It's so much worse than it looks, LOL.

In a strange twist of irony/fate, I was extracting the last few bits when you posted your reply.

Took my left index knuckle down to the bone fishing the bundle out of the dash at the end. I'd post a pic but it's pretty gnarly, LOL.

Anyway, it's all out. It was painful and messy. I'll post a pic of my haul tomorrow after my hand stops throbbing and my spine recovers from 45 minutes of laying on the seat hump in the floor pan with my head under the dash, my left arm through the radio hole, and my right arm wrapped around the brake pedal.

The pic in the OP makes this mess look professional, LOL

 

[Raider L]

@RustCollector,

Boy I hear that!! It's "blood on the risers!" an old paratrooper saying for doing it the hard way.

 

[AuroraGirl]

At least when you put it all together perfectly and with future expanded capability in mind you can make it a pleasant day for future you who won’t have to curse the ******* that cut corners(sometimes past-us)


But sometimes I like to leave things for future me because they have more knowledge and expertise.

But my god you should see how lazy the “previous person” can be sometimes

 

[RustCollector]

Lessons in life: if your wiring work looks like this, you might need a new hobby....

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