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Engine Bay Prep

11/19/17
The engine harness had to come out.  The original one that came in the car had issues so a replacement was swapped in.  Unfortnuately it was for a Caprice or 9C1 so the connections were not all the same.  This caused all sorts of issues but apparently also causes problems when it isn't installed too!!  I will talk more about that later :-(

A harness is not that difficult to remove.  You just have to know how each connector comes off, where to look and what to watch out for.  Thankfully I'd done it a couple times so this wasn't really a problem.  With the harness removed and everything plugged so water stays out of where it does not belong we started to clean things up.

Here are a couple pictures of the engine bay with everything removed that we could easily get to and each hose or hole plugged to keep water out.



Several years ago I installed a faucet on the front of my house for both hot and cold water.  Talk about a luxury!!!  It also comes in handy when trying to cut through oil and grime.  I rinsed everything down with hot water and then soaked it in Simple Green.  After letting it sit for 10 minutes I then rinsed it throughly .  I then repeated the sequence following it up with a quick pressure washing.  It came out really clean and I can now proceed with installing the new harness.



Where I realized I made a mistake was that with the harness removed, I had no way to power the car enough to pop the trunk.  Why this was so important is that the new harness and battery wires are still in there!!  I had to dig through the FSM and locate the schematic which while not that difficult - I could have saved myself some time had I cleaned it out a couple weeks ago.

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