Rescuing my Volvo after 3 years parked

[jbg]

Yikes, that looks like a lot of work. Perhaps I can get lucky with a tie wrap? I'll need to get back to the car to check out the connector.

Thanks for the reply!

[ngoma]

Yes, mine was in similar condition to yours. I was able to crimp new wire to stubs close up near to the connector as possible without repinning. I cleaned up the stubs with a simple wire brush to remove the green corrosion to prepare it for the crimp.

Not as elegant as Tom B.'s solution but so far it is functional.

[v8volvo]

Originally Posted by jbg

The Greenbook shows the circuit diagram for the pre-heating system so I think I should be able to re-make the harness, and the interconnections between the temperature sensor (brown, BN), indicator lamp (orange, OR), fuse box (blue, BL), and the start inhibitor switch (blue-green, BL-GN). I do have spare larger gauge wires for the 12v input to battery positive and another as output to the glow plug bus bar (both red, R). There's also a ground (black, SB). I likely won't be able to get all of the same color wiring as factory. I suppose I could go to a few junkyards to find similar wiring colors, if I really wanted to.

My question is: can I de-pin the wires in the 4-pin glow plug relay connector, so that I can re-use the connector? I don't have the connector here to examine it myself.

Originally Posted by ngoma

I was able to crimp new wire to stubs close up near to the connector as possible without repinning. I cleaned up the stubs with a simple wire brush to remove the green corrosion to prepare it for the crimp.

Not as elegant as Tom B.'s solution but so far it is functional.

Actually IMHO Tom's solution is more work than one really would need to do. I guess the benefit of his method is preserving original wire colors. But I am assuming in your case the concern is less about the integrity of those round terminals and more about the wire insulation falling off (at least that's always been the issue with my cars.... ).

The 4-way connector can easily be de-pinned (connector body comes apart like lego as Tom's post shows) and my solution has been to just use junkyard harness parts to salvage new female pins with several inches of wire pigtail of whatever color I can find, not caring too much about that since you still have wire position as a reference for troubleshooting if it's ever needed. Make a good splice back down where it meets the main harness, install the new pins in the connector, and it's good to go.

Or ngoma's suggested method of using the existing pins and short pigtails and just replacing most of the wire. Similar outcome and probably even more efficient in terms of effort vs result.

Some of us touch up with brushed-on "liquid electrical tape" for years as the insulation crumbles away but that's a game you can only take so far.

[jbg]

Originally Posted by v8volvo

The 4-way connector can easily be de-pinned (connector body comes apart like lego as Tom's post shows) and my solution has been to just use junkyard harness parts to salvage new female pins with several inches of wire pigtail of whatever color I can find

Great! Then I guess my plan my attack will be to work on building a new GP harness and integrate that into the good engine harness I have here at home. I haven't been to a junk yard in a few years so that should be an adventure.

Thanks ngoma and v8volvo for helping with this one.

[jbg]

The only other update I have at this point is that the crankshaft damper is out of the ERR process. It took off the rust and some paint. I think this is the best it's gonna get.

[jbg]

Hey gang,

I'm working on cleaning up the big 27mm bolt for the crankshaft damper. There is more of that very strong epoxy on the shank and on some of the threads. It's slow going cleaning this off without damaging the fine threads.

I've been Googling around but I cannot find the size of that bolt. I am thinking of getting an appropriately sized die to chase out all the debris and epoxy from its threads. Anyone know the size of the bolt?

Thanks.

[v8volvo]

Hmm. I wonder if the greenbook gives it? Otherwise no idea here, at least. Maybe a good fastener supplier could figure it out with measurements. I certainly would think it is a pretty irregular size. A die to match it would probably only have one job to ever do -- cleaning up D24/T crankshaft bolts -- and I would not be surprised if it were expensive....

What about a wire wheel on a bench grinder? I would not think the threads would suffer from that as long as you kept them parallel to the motion of the wheel and didn't go too nuts, no?