Engine Bay Prep

My build has been moving a bit slow lately. I’ve been pretty busy with work and family stuff so I haven’t had much time to get things done in the garage. Right now I’m working on getting the engine bay prepped and ready for paint.

Since I’m tucking the main harness I figured it would be a good idea to fill in all those unnecessary holes in the fender wells. I still haven’t decided which hole I’m going to use to route the harness through the firewall but I got most of the unwanted holes welded up. It took me a while to get the welds to come out pretty decent as I’ve never really welded anything before. With the guidance of some friends, I manage to lay down some tolerable welds. I might redo the battery tray area or have someone come over and do it for me as it’s less than satisfactory…

I started out by sanding the paint down to bare metal around the holes with an angle die grinder. I then took a circular file and made sure there wasn’t any paint on the inside edge…this may differ depending on the thickness of the metal.

After doing a little research on filling small holes I came across a few people who recommended using a penny on the backside of the hole and then filling it in with the welder. The penny shouldn’t stick to the welds and you should have a nice clean fill. Well, this didn’t work out too well for me so I ended up just cutting out some small pieces of sheet metal and using a welding magnet to hold it in place. Next up I’ll take a metal grinder and grind the welds down smooth and get everything else ready for primer.

Main Harness and Engine Harness Wire Tuck

Alright, so on to the harnesses. All of the braided wire loom and heat shrink finally came in so I’ll be starting back on that soon. Right now I have the engine harness partially deloomed and I depinned all the plugs that I want inside the cabin and ran the wires through the firewall grommet. A few things have to be cut, lengthened, and soldered back together to make it past the firewall.

I’m debating on combining all of the aftermarket Defi sensor wires, MAP sensor, boost solenoid, and IAT sensor wires into the engine bay harness. This would make things a lot cleaner under the hood and make it easier to hide stuff. The problem with this is if I ever want to sell any of the gauges and sensors later on down the road, I would have to take the whole harness apart. Another option I have is to bundle all the aftermarket sensor wires into its own separate harness which would make it easier to pull things out if I want to sell it or something.

I have plenty of time to figure this out so no rush there. The MAP, IAT, and boost solenoid wires will be bundled into the engine harness for sure though.

There is a lot in the main harness that still needs to be removed and a lot of wires that I need to shorten. I picked up a doner harness for a good price off someone from Zilvia.net. This way all the wires that I need to extend are the same OEM color…I’m anal like that. I had originally looked at one on eBay that was buy now or best offer. This guy had it for sale for $165!! So my best offer was $100 plus shipping–he declined. Lol, $165 is way too expensive for what it is…plus I’m just going to hack it up. The one I got on Zilvia was $70 shipped, win.