The last couple of days I have been working on restoring the taillight harness. Although I am completely redoing all of the wiring in the car, the taillight harness is one section that will have to be reused. I had previously removed the plastic loom and marked the position of all the breakouts as I cleaned the wires.
There were several sections on the portion that was within the loom that were taped with electrical tape. I undid each of these to verify the integrity of the connection.
As long as they were visually, mechanically, and electrically solid I cleaned them with electrical contact cleaner and retaped them.
Some of the taped sections were very bulky.
This looks much better!
This junction did not fair so well. There is literally two strands holding this together.
I cut the single wire and stripped back the insulation just far enough so that I would be able to solder it to the other wires. I left the crimp in place but thoroughly cleaned up the exposed wires. Once I was happy with their condition I tinned up both sides and then soldered the connection back together. I used some heat shrink tubing to further strengthen and seal the connection and then retaped the junction.
This was the last junction on this section of the taillight harness and it was solid, so aside from cleaning and retaping nothing else was needed.
My next step will be to disassemble and clean each of the sockets. They are very dirty and are packed with so much dielectric grease that I cannot tell the condition of the contacts. Stay tuned for Part 2!
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