MikeStang 247 Report post Posted May 5, 2015 Well my Best Friend finally forked up the cash to get an American Auto Wire kit for his 69. When I did my AAW kit my car had NO interior and I mean Nothing, not even the lower dash. His install is going to be done in a complete running / driving car, so we will see how quick it is gonna be. We started on the car last night, and I decided we would attempt the removal / install and remove as FEW of the interior pieces as possible, so here's what we did last night. His car is a completed interior Mach 1 with Fold down, so the first thing we did was to remove the following components. 1. Hood "We opted to remove the hood for ease of access" 2. Driver and Passenger front seats "This makes it easier to get under the dash" 3. Dash Pad & The instrument bezel and Pass Side Clock 4. The lower rear seat. "You will have to also remove the seat belts to get the seat out" 5. Driver and pass Sill plates. 6. Driver and Pass Kick Panels. Those are the only parts that we removed as we wanted to see how LITTLE you would actually have to pull to do this in a Completed car. I started under the hood and began un-looming all of the headlight wiring, along with the battery and all the electrical to the Solenoid, as well as the wires from his MSD box, Distributor and the Fuse Panel Bulk head. you simply unplug the headlight stuff and pull the wiring out. You will be splicing into the Front Turn signals, as well as the marker lights. The headlights come with new plugs from AAW so just pull them out also. Next we moved on to the inside and started sorting out all the under dash wiring. He has a Classic Auto Air System, along with an after market stereo system so we have to seperate those wires from the factory harness locations where they were tapped in at. Once that was done we cut them loose from the harness and rolled them up for later attachment to the new harness. We left the Lower dash in place so that we could put the new harness back in where the old one came out and not have to worry about routing it correctly and having enough slack in the new harness once its installed. Next we located the rear body harness and cut it loose in the door sill area and pulled it out from the Trunk..... You get new Tail light plugs, and side marker plugs in your AAW kit so you wont need the stock ones. There are a few options with the back up lights....you can either wire them directly into the new harness OR save the male/Female plugs and attach them into the new harness.... I prefer to just solder them right into the harness, but you can do it how you like. Next we moved back under the dash and pulled the fuse box, and ALL the other goodies out of there which pretty much got All the remaining harness, then I went back under the hood and popped the Alternator off and removed that harness, along with the starter wiring, and in the mean time my buddy pulled the said panel lights out and left them hanging because we will be reusing the ground wire on his new lights because its grounded to the sub structure and we wanna leave the panels in place, then we will be fishing a power wire up from the new AAW harness via the old power wire through the sail panel area because we are attempting to do this and remove AS LITTLE of the interior as possible just for the fun of it and to show how easy it really can be. It took us from 7pm to 9:45pm to remove the entire harness from the car. = 2 hours & 45 Min with 2 guys with all the appropriate tools, and my prior knowledge of what came in the kit and what we would need to save, and his knowledge of how to tear the interior out after countless times doing it for upgrades. We only made a few Cuts in the old harness with the only major one being separating the rear harness from the main, and thats just because the plugs are so big you cant feed them through the holes. Then had a few cuts for the radio and AC Power wires and Fan Controller. Planning on starting the Install tonight, which will go a bit slower, but I plan on having it done by Friday hopefully. PS... Buy or rent the crimping tools as it will save a lot of time and make better crimps..... I will update the Post with pics and progress tomorrow Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
RPM 1,190 Report post Posted May 5, 2015 "We only made a few Cuts in the old harness with the only major one being separating the rear harness from the main, and thats just because the plugs are so big you cant feed them through the holes." Sounds odd, I was able to unplug and remove the engine, underdash, and taillight harnesses w/o any issues on my Mach One. If your friend decides to unload the old harness, I believe Midlife buys old harnesses. Good luck on your rewire. It sounds like your friend has a real good friend to help him on the wiring. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
shaun071 62 Report post Posted May 6, 2015 Good info Mike. I've got the harness just catching up on other jobs before tackling the wiring Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Midlife 815 Report post Posted May 6, 2015 The tail-light harness has to be installed and removed from behind the rear passenger interior panel: fishing it forward and backward. Yes, I do buy cores, but with your harness being cannibalized for connectors, the good parts for me will be long gone. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Ridge Runner 1,116 Report post Posted May 6, 2015 My original harness came out easily ,you have to feed the plugins through the holes one at a time to get them through and they were a tight fit .I had to bend a tab of metal at the rear door jamb in the top of the rocker to get the pig tails to go through there but it all came out with no damage .I will be using my original harness again ,it is a tach harness and in very good shape .The only trouble i had was the inside harness through the fire wall /the fuse block , was stuck to the fire wall and i almost couldn't get it loose . Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
MikeStang 247 Report post Posted May 6, 2015 Hey Midlife we arent going to need any of the harness connectors so its going to be pretty much complete. I can send ya some pics if you like Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Midlife 815 Report post Posted May 7, 2015 In that case, please send any pics to harnesses at fusemail.com and we can continue the discussion there. Thanks!! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
MikeStang 247 Report post Posted May 8, 2015 Well we managed to fish the rear Body harness wires through the Driver side Sill plate easily enough, so we have not removed the rear panels on the car :) We did however have to pull the sail panels down to unscrew the ground wires and replace them with the new wires from the AAW kit. We went ahead and laid most of the under dash wires in place and screwed the fuse panel to the firewall. We then pulled all the under hood wires through the 2 holes in the firewall and started wiring the headlights up at the conclusion of the evening we had gotten all the stuff listed done and the driver side headlights wired in. Total time spent was from 7:30 to 10:15 = 2hrs and 45 min with 2 guys I would suggest if your going to do this install that you Rent or buy the correct crimper's from AAW because I did my harness without them and it was a real pain in the butt, but their crimpers make a nice factory looking Strong crimp. Hoping to finish this thing up by end of next week... Stay tuned Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mustangmike6996 34 Report post Posted May 31, 2015 I did my AAW harness with a set of Astro ratcheting crimpers. They worked very well and were much cheaper than the AAW tools Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
