Wait, I Never Finished This?!

I decided this weekend to dive back into working on KITT, and realized I never finished the taillight harness.  Just for curiosity sake I pulled up the blog post where I started on the taillight harness, and realized it was in July of 2012.  That's insane!  I really need to get back to work on this Project!

I started this weekend by putting a new section of wire loom on the section of the harness I had already cleaned and restored.

With the loom in place, I just had these last two sections to restore.

I started by peeling off the old electrical tape on the junction just before the grommet.  You can see how much dirt was still trapped in there.

This plug had a zip tie with a pin style mount.  I am not sure if this means the original clip broke off, but I will have to deal with this when it gets reinstalled.

Metal mounting clip -- needs to be cleaned before reattaching.

I removed the smaller loom from the upper section.  The wires seemed to be in good shape, just needed to be cleaned.

I decided before I got too far on wrapping the new section I should probably tape off the junctions coming out of the loom on the main section.  I bought 3M Super 33+ tape as it is supposed to be the best stuff to use for wiring harnesses.  It does not unravel and the adhesive does not get gummy.

I started to peel off the old electrical tape from the remaining section.

That's actually black duct tape on the brown wires.  I will definitely have to check this out...

With all the wires uncovered, I hit them with the air compressor to blow all the loose dirt off.

Then I wiped the wires down individually with a Gojo wipe.

I'm not sure why someone used duct tape, but the connection underneath was clean and solid and looked factory. I taped the connection properly and then retaped this section of the harness.

I installed the smaller loom on this upper section.

I taped off the main harness wires and the junction of the upper smaller loom.

Once the loom was properly taped off, I cleaned both of the connections on this side with all-purpose cleaner and a scrub brush, then rinsed and dried them thoroughly.

On the way back out to the garage with the clean harness, our neighbor saw us with it and commented, "Oh, the new wiring harness came in!"  I thought that was quite the compliment considering this is a restored original harness.

The next thing that needed to be done was to clean the two side marker light sockets.  I used the same vinegar/salt (acidic) solution as before to eat away at any corrosion.

I was able to get both side marker light sockets in the solution at the same time.

While the side marker light sockets soaked in the acidic solution, I used contact cleaner on the two connectors that had not been previously cleaned.  Both of these connectors were in great shape to start with.

I followed that up with DeoxIT D5, which is a cleaner and protector for connections.

Once I was done cleaning those connectors, I gave each light socket a bath in the water/baking soda (neutralizer) solution.

Time to reassemble the sockets!  I am not adding dielectric grease at this time.  I want to do more research to find out how much is necessary.  These were packed full and being an insulator, electrically that does not make sense to me.

Final step: adding the foam seals.

Taillight harness has been restored!!

Next up, this bad boy!  What is it?  Stay tuned to find out!