Head Gasket Trouble - Pull Engine

Custom Headlight Harness

While I was installing my new guages in the a pillar and upgrading the LED lights in my dash cluster I also decided to do the Fog Light Switch Fix. Then as I did research on this I found that the headlights are also under powered due to the factory harness setup. So, I decided to rewire it.

Parts list from SummitRacing.com:



I ended up getting the wrong pigtail above for the relays but it was just wire color and not awg size so I ended up using them anyways. Worked great. I also needed a second relay and fuse kit for the fog lights, cuz I rewired that too while I was in there. I already had purchased a cheaper relay and in-line 12awg fuse from autozone. They are working fine right now but the parts from summitracing I got are far superior!!

I ended up tearing out the factory headlight harness and completely replacing it with upgraded wires, new split braid sleeving(awesome stuff btw) and also split up the wiring from the alternator and headlights and rerouted them completely.

Here you can see the factory wiring exposed.






Drivers side wires/colors/connectors




Here you can see 2 split sets of wires. The split red wires with black stripe are the high beam power leads. The split green wires with black stripe are the low beam power leads.




Connectors.

Red=fog
Blue=high/low beam
Green=Turn signal/parking lamp
Tiel=Parking lamp




Here are all my supplies. I upgraded all power and ground wires to 12awg.




Factory harness had stamped/solder the black grounds and the brown parking lamps together at the drivers side.

Grounds




Parking lamps




I soldered almost every wire I could. Others got butt connectors. All got heat shrink.




I rerouted the new headlight harness through the upper frame rail. Here you can see my passenger side end result. I bought some fabric tape to use after I finished up with the sleeving. Stuff is awesome. I ended up using the factory location for the ground wires for now. I will eventually, some day, tear the whole car down and hide all wiring.




Here you can see my drivers side with both relays wired and connected.




If you look on the fender you can see my new sealed fuse holder on left, and on the right the fog light relay is mounted.




On the inside.

Headlight switch was melting.




Here is new vs old fog light connector I bought. You can see the little plastic clip in the old connector was broke so it didn't hold the wire inside the plug.




New plug:






For the fog light fix you cut the blue wire off behind the connector. Then you splice it into one of the brown wires on the headlight switch so you can power them on when the parking lamps are on.




I used a blue quick splice.







A year ago or so I did the 3G alternator upgrade. I decided to clean those wires up and reroute them as well.




5 wires on bottom are the factory headlight wires(heading to passenger side) and the top 3 are the alternator wires.

More pictures:

Parking and turn signal connector




Fog light




Outside parking lamp




Low/High beam connector

I wish I had before pictures. Over the holidays here it rained for 3 days straight so I hit the pole barn and decided to use an old polisher/buffer my parents had. My 89 still rocks it's original paint and with my newer fiberglass hood you could really see the difference from the old vs new. The hood was matched to the original paint maybe 5 or 6 years ago.

The original paint was starting to oxidize and had a terrible white haze over it. I wash and wax the car quite often but it still oxidized. Plus, everytime i wax the roof the white applicator pad turned completely black. So I figured my clear coat was completely gone. Little did I know that's not what that means. Thin maybe but not gone.

So I bought a clay bar, good polish and wax, and went to town on the old girl.

The clay bar took the over spray right off from a previous whoops. It also took all the road grime and contaminates out of the paint that I didn't even know where there. Mostly on the front of vehicle and top of vehicle.

Then I started polishing. Bam! The oxidation came right out. I was pumped. I had no idea it was that easy.

Followed up with a good yellow wax and that buffer really turned this old paint job into a nice shine again. Looks new again. From 2 feet, not 50.

It's still old and has its issues but overall I am impressed!

Shines so good all you can see is the barn roof!



Here you can see where I need a high speed polisher for where the water sits in the spoiler when it's out in rain. And that isn't very often.




Not a great pic from indoors but you get the idea of how shiny and nice it turned out.

That is a good looking hood brotha, looks like a picture worth framing and hanging in the garage

Well my first part that wore out after the rebuild is the cheap autozone felpro exhaust manifold gaskets(MS90000).

I ended up buying Percy's reusable aluminum exhaust gaskets.




They are double layered.






I found the problem with the old ones!

Passenger side and driver side both.





Used a die grinder to shave the metal back to my heads. Used old gaskets for template.




No more leaky.