Wiring questions

Hey guys, I really screwed up. I recently had the renix "brown wire" issue. It burnt up a bunch of my wires. Some weird voice told me to just wire in a fresh harness, so I did. I have a parts jeep, of the same year (1987). I disconnected everything under the dash. and seperated the harness where it meets at the firewall. I decided to cut above all the lower components. Where I screwed up in my opinion is that instead of cutting and splicing the new harness one wire at a time, I went ahead and cut my "messed up" harness completely. Now I regret doing that but there's nothing I can do to change it.

I've run into a problem. There are several sets of wires on both ends "orig. harness - donor" that are alike. I.E. 3-Wht/Blk, 3-Org/Blk, 2-Blk/Ylw, 3-Blu, 3-Pnk, etc. Just for example-Can I just connect the Donor Org/Blk to the Harness Org/Blk or does every wire have it's own "match" that it must go to. As of right now, The only thing I can think of is removing my dash completely and looking at a diagram to see where every single wire goes. I can't believe I screwed this up....I'd really appreciate any help from the wiring guru's.

Im no expert but it seems to me that you are going to have to take your time, pull your dash and study your diagram wire by wire

and what is the renix "brown wire" issue? I have an '86 and Im pretty sure its a renix, so Im just curious what that is.

19864cyl said:

and what is the renix "brown wire" issue? I have an '86 and Im pretty sure its a renix, so Im just curious what that is.

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The brown wire from the ignition switch, the ignition switch is a multi pole switch the brown wire is one of the switched sub circuits. Heater blower and other stuff, the wire thickness, fuses and the switch are marginally engineered for the amp draw. The brown wire has a tendency to cook off, especially if the fan speed resistor pack fails and shorts.

I may be able to help some. Where exactly did you cut it? Are we talking about the harness that goes up the far left hand side of the firewall?

I believe so....it's the harness that goes up into the dash on the left hand side. It actually enters the dash rightside the headlight switch. I cut just below that, I don't think that there is anything extremely difficult to do. I think it's just a matter of connecting the right wire to the right wire. Since there are 3 org/blk's on each side of the harness, i'm not too sure which org/blk goes to which org/blk. I have to go to work right now, but when I get out i'll write some more.

The Org/blk are the dash dimmed illum. My wiring diagram just says Org-T I'm thinking "T" means tracer and is actually black. Easy to test (if I'm right) pull the tail and parking fuse and the Inst Lts fuse. Ohm from the Instr Lts fuse to the end of one of the three Org/blk wires. Then from the other end of the fuse holder to the other wire Org/blk wire end.
The path is from the tail light fuse up to the headlight switch, through the dimmer, down to the instr illum fuse then back up to a splice and the instrument dimmed illumination and whatever else dims when you turn the headlight switch.
One Org/blk from the headlight switch down to the instr illum fuse (one end) the other Org/blk up from the other end of the instru illum fuse, whatever is left over is dimmed illumination for something.