Engine wiring harness questions

[Lizzy]

I have a 1988 ford ranger, the guy that gave me the truck said he started pulling everything to make a drag truck out it. So the truck now has almost no electrical under the hood, he did leave the headlight wiring in at least. Question 1= Would it be best to get a new harness and put it back together before I do everything else or just rebuild just what I will need? The truck will be carbureted. Question 2= For some dumb reason he cut a bundle of wires that are located on the passenger side firewall almost at the bottom. Best I can tell right now is it was maybe the wires to ECU that is not there ether (The truck had a 2.3 fuel injected engine). I have now idea what to do about that mess so any ideas would be grateful! Sorry for such a long post and hopefully I put it in the right place. lol

 

[Bird76Mojo]

If you're swapping to a carbed V8 then you won't really have to worry about any of that wiring necessarily. Nor the ECU. The wires on the drivers side inner fender near the firewall can be tapped in to to get gauges working, etc. Having a EVTM book for your year of truck does help in this area and they're cheap to buy on Ebay, or someone here may be able to scan you the pages you need.

Most people that go to a carbed V8 just use aftermarket gauges in the cab, because hooking up the original gauges can be quite the undertaking to get them working properly and even then, they were never the best or most accurate gauges to begin with.

If you're wanting to go back to an original Ranger 2.3 then you'll need a factory harness in my opinion. That would be the easiest in that scenario.



GB

 

[Lizzy]

OK,, going to go look for that book right now.