What Do I Keep From A Loom?

[peter_m7uk]

I've managed to remove the mass of spaghetti that is the loom from a 1989 2.0

Sierra Ghia. I was wondering if anyone else had reused the loom from a Ghia model and, if so, which circuits did you cut out of it? Obviously, stuff like electric windows and mirrors, heated screens and audio equipment can go. But, there is also a lamp failure module and an auxiliary warning system which seem to get involved with various gauges and warning lamps. I'd quite like to discard these as well, but I'm worried that I may remove something important. And I know that you can get a Vicki Green loom for £60 or whatever, but I want to have a go at this unless I'm forced to admit defeat!

 

Cheers,

 

Peter

[steve in stockport]

Peter,

 

get some knee pads cos you will be crawling round on all fours for a few days to sort it out but its worth it.

I removed everything that was unnecessary - elec sunroof, windows, central locking, lamp fail unit, auxillary warning unit, speaker wires, ariel lead , they all went into the parts box.

left myself with just ignition, charging circuit,lights, indicators, fog lamp, reverse lamp, brakes, fuel pump and sender, dash instruments, wipers, washer motor oh and the fuel injection loom and ecu.

 

Remember check the run once, check it again and then once more before using the wire cutters, the less joints you have to make the less chance of developing any faults.

 

Steve

[Guest chris brown]

As Steve says just be very careful when removing unwanted wire as Mr Ford had some very strange ways of doing some of his wiring (like half way down various parts of the loom you will find a bundle of wires fastened together and not just earth wires) but stick with it in the end it is easier than going down the Vicki Green route at least you end up with all the correct relays etc and once you get going on it soon starts to make sense Well eventually

[Guest hypermick]

Hi Peter,.

 

Id agree with the others, just be very careful with the wire cutters but dont be put off by the mass of entanglement !

 

I personally wouldnt do anything until you have the loom fully opened out either on the garage floor or driveway, in the same way it was routed in the car and take a really good hard look at it. Youll be really surprised how easy it is to work out the whole mess, and soon you will want to get a large amount of the excess cables off and bindings undone to get back to the wire sources where they are to be clipped off. A good tip is to loosely tie some cable ties around where you are removing the bindings, reason being some of the cables will run one way in a cluster and with bindings stripped they reverse themselves, which leaves an excess loop.

 

If it helps, assuming you carefully labelled everything as it came out, you should be safe to remove all the unwanted switches and accessory connectors, many of which are multiplugged.

 

Another good idea is to grab hold of all the known electrical bits you will be using and plug them in again, for instance steering column, lamps, indicators, horn, and if you want to be really brave, do what I did and reconnect the alternator and battery with an earth loop picking up all the relative points and then test out one by one to see what operates. This stage can really save you hours since all you will finally do is lift the whole thing in one modified and shortened clump into the car for fitting. The other big benefit of this method is you can strip back right into the relay/fuse area and dig out the excess there too,. ( my theory is Robin Hood was derived from a simple and basic car, best kept that way ! - less in there less to go wrong !)

 

As a rough guide you will, when you are finished throw away about 60% of the mass !!

 

One last thing, as someone else said Mr Ford has some wierd ways with looms, and youll spot some soldered joints hidden well inside the bindings. If you strip right back to these points to remove cables dont forget to either heatshrink the joints well afterwards before you rebind them. I used spiral wrap instead of cloth binding since it is easier to remove if you need to fault find later on.

 

hope this helps

 

Mick.

[peter_m7uk]

Wow, thanks for all the tips, fellas! Can I just pick up on a couple of things, though? I will be using a Robin Hood fuel tank, so is it possible to use the Sierra pump and sender, or will I have to buy those 3rd party? As I will remove the auxiliary warning module, which operates the "low fuel" light, is it straightforward to wire in another fuel warning? I expect the oil warning and maybe some others are operated by that unit, so the same applies? Seems a bit daft to keep the aux warning module, when it tells you stuff about doors left open and so on, which aren't going to be a problem! I assume the lamp failure module is a bit of a complicated luxury which can be bypassed by simply checking your lights regularly... Also, I had two front fog lamps - Are they necessary for the SVA, or just the rear one?

 

Hope you can help,

 

Pete

[Guest TerryBarry]

Also, I had two front fog lamps - Are they necessary for the SVA, or just the rear one?

Just the rear one

[Guest peter2b2002]

Hi peter, be carefull with the earth wires , after my sva i fitted the wind screen but the washers didnt work, hours later found the earth wire to the relay missing, so make shure every thing works before fully fixing the loom in,

good luck pete2b

[steve1506]

Gents, I am confused. I have a Viki Green loom with my 2B+ what else do I need from the donor

[Guest chris brown]

Gents, I am confused. I have a Viki Green

Not surprising most if not all who have used the Viki Green loom Have been confused at some point. As you can see from previous posts on this thread. If you still have the Sierra loom use that as in the end you have all the correct connectors/fuses and relays. Then sell on the VG loom to some other unsuspecting person but not on this site (it wouldn’t work) but its surprising what sells on eBay

[Derek]

My donor was a G reg ghia, fuel injection. I kept the sub loom for the fuel injection as described on the Viki Green diagram. Nothing else.

Kept all the bulbs and relays (see below) Had to buy a flasher unit, send me a PM if you need the details, Its bloody cold out there tonite!

 

What really threw me was the relay's for the headlights. The coloumn switches had thin wires so no way were they going to handle the power and the colours did not match the diagram. I then found out RH have a relay pack available, cant remember how much though. Solved all the head scratching.