harness integration question

[Ishmael]

I keep asking questions because I have no idea how certain things work. For instance with the stock engine wiring harness I have in the car, I just hooked everything up and plugged it into the factory style bulkhead. My ignition and everything else runs from there. With an ls harness, how does everything integrate? Am I splicing certain wires and retaining the starter wires? Is there a company that makes a retro fit engine harness that will plug into my bulkhead without any splices? I've got a ato fuse block from year one coming some day, it would be nice to be able to use it. I have to figure all this out before I jump on board.

[Z06vet]

What engine harness do you have and what body harness do you have? I'm slowly working mine out, with help from speartech and american autowire. There are lots of options in my AAW harness and some will not be used. I can help a little with some more info, untill someone with more experience can help you out. Are you splicing into a stock existing harness or new harness? What stage of the wiring are you at?
Scott

[Ishmael]

I haven't even bought an engine so I'm not working with anything just yet. I'm just trying to figure it out before I jump in. I've got my stock harness and I assume i'll be going with a modified harness from speartech unless there's one that will bolt up where my factory harness does. That would be cool. I'm just not sure if I'm supposed to continue to run my factory harness and splice in the ls harness or if it is almost entirely seperate.

[Z06vet]

The engine harness is almost completely separate. It will not plug in to the factory bulkhead at the firewall. I am going to mount the computer on the passenger firewall or inner fender. I drilled an access hole in the firewall to route the rest of the engine harness inside & over to the mail harness. Lots of ways to route things, depending on your setup & preferences.

[CarlC]

You can integrate the LS ECM and engine wiring into a factory bulkhead, but you need to be very comfortable with wiring.

Many of the engine harness wiring slots can be removed and replaced with an appropriate engine/PCM wire. Buying the needed blade wire connectors to adapt to the stock bulkhead, and a good crimper, go a long way toward making a clean installation. Del City has both.

I did this in mine. There are enough postions in the engine and lighting harness to route the needed wiring through the bulkheads, but I do have a DSE wiper motor. It does not use the bulkhead, so it opens up a few more spaces.

If you decide to try it, make a list of everything that needs to be routed through the bulkhead. Then, pick positions that make the most sense so that the harness can be modular. It's nice to be able to remove the just engine harness bulkhead connector and have no wires going to the lighting side. Making wiring diagrams is also important so that you can troubleshoot and repair later without banging your head against a wall because you don't know which wire goes where. It's time consuming, but it has already saved me several times while making modifications later on.

[Ishmael]

I'm going to have to find someone who has already done it and take a good look. I really want to do this swap. I did the math and my injected hp goals are cheaper with an ls2 but its going to be more complicated. I have to swallow that pill but I want to know as much as possible first.