At this point in the build I know where all the electrical items will be located within the engine bay and cabin so it was time to modify the Toyota Starlet wiring loom to suit the Mini and stripping out some wiring for items that will not be used in the Mini. The first step was to remove all the electrical tape & loom tube and ending up with a pile of old tape and tube/wrapping.
I inspected both looms (cabin loom & engine bay loom) and only a small amount of the electrical tape used in the engine bay loom had gone slightly hard however every wire and connector was in excellent condition. The photo below shows the looms stripped of all the tape, wrapping and loom tube (with some new tape temporarily holding parts of it all together). Each connector was marked with green or red tape - green to keep; red to remove.
The following items in the Toyota Starlet wiring loom are not required in the Mini :
Most of the removal was relatively easy as each component had its own groupings of wires. The harder part of the task was to ensure that the air-conditioning wiring was removed correctly, as the radiator & A/C fans had inter-dependent wiring between four separate relays. This is the total amount of wiring that was removed from the factory wiring looms - a roll of red electrical tape was put among the wires for a size reference :
Where any small gauge wires had to be cut and rejoined, I used proper crimps and crimping tool - not the yellow/red/blue terminals/connectors and cheap wire crimpers that are prolific in most auto stores. Crimps like in the photo below were wrapped in tape after the wires joined.
Instead of cutting any unnecessary wires off at the connectors, I used a universal de-pin tool set to remove the unused terminal pins within the connectors.
Most connectors have a locking mechanism that has to be levered out slightly before the terminals can be removed.
In my case, there were small plastic levers within the connector housings that had to be lifted with one of the de-pin tools before the wire and terminal pin was pulled out.
Being able to remove the terminal pins from any connector also allowed me to consolidate some connectors such as these two shown below. After removing multiple wires the smaller connector only had 3 wires left in it and the other connector room for 7 pins to be added.
...so I moved the 3 wires from the smaller connector to the larger one
After approx. 12 hours of work, all the redundant wiring was removed and the remaining wiring placed in the Mini engine bay for a trial fit. I did find that the main fuse box was not going to easily fit within the engine bay so I will be mounting somewhere behind the dash.
As expected, a substantial amount of re-routing of cables needs to be done that will result in a substantial number of hours of work - probably far more than the amount of time spent stripping redundant wiring from the loom. There are also quite a few things to ADD to the wiring loom so the loom will not be completely re-wrapped until it's all done. I need to add :
Sensors & power for a new digital display
Lighting for gauges & switches
Power windows
Central locking
Heater fan switch
New stereo wiring
USB ports
Where I need to extend any wiring, I will be using the matching colour wiring by using the range supplied by Tycab. They are the major manufacturer of cable to the automotive industry in Australia and have a range of approx 40 different wire/trace colours to match every wire I need.
An important part of the wiring task is also to use proper tape for the task and that's not the general purpose electrical tape from your local hardware store. The tape I used was Narva PVC Harness Tape which I found to be very sticky and excellent for sealing over any wire connections. The general purpose tape is okay for temporarily holding groups of wires but not for wrapping. I also bought some Tesa adhesive cloth tape to wrap the loom that will be in the cabin area.
I inspected both looms (cabin loom & engine bay loom) and only a small amount of the electrical tape used in the engine bay loom had gone slightly hard however every wire and connector was in excellent condition. The photo below shows the looms stripped of all the tape, wrapping and loom tube (with some new tape temporarily holding parts of it all together). Each connector was marked with green or red tape - green to keep; red to remove.
The following items in the Toyota Starlet wiring loom are not required in the Mini :
- TEMS (electronic suspension) module & switch
- Door control module (For central locking, power windows)
- Fog lights
- The following items used by the HVAC system :
- HVAC control module
- Air vent direction motors
- Vacuum switch valve
- Idle up valve
- Coolant temperature sensor
- Ambient temperature sensor
- Air-conditioning fan & associated relays/fuses
- Rear window demister
- Rear wiper & washer pump
- Power mirrors
- Power window switches
Most of the removal was relatively easy as each component had its own groupings of wires. The harder part of the task was to ensure that the air-conditioning wiring was removed correctly, as the radiator & A/C fans had inter-dependent wiring between four separate relays. This is the total amount of wiring that was removed from the factory wiring looms - a roll of red electrical tape was put among the wires for a size reference :
Where any small gauge wires had to be cut and rejoined, I used proper crimps and crimping tool - not the yellow/red/blue terminals/connectors and cheap wire crimpers that are prolific in most auto stores. Crimps like in the photo below were wrapped in tape after the wires joined.
Instead of cutting any unnecessary wires off at the connectors, I used a universal de-pin tool set to remove the unused terminal pins within the connectors.
Most connectors have a locking mechanism that has to be levered out slightly before the terminals can be removed.
In my case, there were small plastic levers within the connector housings that had to be lifted with one of the de-pin tools before the wire and terminal pin was pulled out.
Being able to remove the terminal pins from any connector also allowed me to consolidate some connectors such as these two shown below. After removing multiple wires the smaller connector only had 3 wires left in it and the other connector room for 7 pins to be added.
...so I moved the 3 wires from the smaller connector to the larger one
After approx. 12 hours of work, all the redundant wiring was removed and the remaining wiring placed in the Mini engine bay for a trial fit. I did find that the main fuse box was not going to easily fit within the engine bay so I will be mounting somewhere behind the dash.
As expected, a substantial amount of re-routing of cables needs to be done that will result in a substantial number of hours of work - probably far more than the amount of time spent stripping redundant wiring from the loom. There are also quite a few things to ADD to the wiring loom so the loom will not be completely re-wrapped until it's all done. I need to add :
Sensors & power for a new digital display
Lighting for gauges & switches
Power windows
Central locking
Heater fan switch
New stereo wiring
USB ports
Where I need to extend any wiring, I will be using the matching colour wiring by using the range supplied by Tycab. They are the major manufacturer of cable to the automotive industry in Australia and have a range of approx 40 different wire/trace colours to match every wire I need.
An important part of the wiring task is also to use proper tape for the task and that's not the general purpose electrical tape from your local hardware store. The tape I used was Narva PVC Harness Tape which I found to be very sticky and excellent for sealing over any wire connections. The general purpose tape is okay for temporarily holding groups of wires but not for wrapping. I also bought some Tesa adhesive cloth tape to wrap the loom that will be in the cabin area.
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