Our Back To The Streets Camaro is nearing the final stages of its transformation from a dedicated bracket car to a modern day street brawler. This journey has been a ground-up endeavor, with every aspect of the car being addressed. The chassis, engine, suspension, and body have all been upgraded.
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1| Here are the individual sub-harnesses that will come together to create the complete ha
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2| The main harness piece has all the correct factory components, like a glass fuse block,
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3 | Since AA makes the fuse block to stock specs, it will mount right in the stock locatio
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Unfortunately the coverage of the project was stalled for a while as we took a little break after we got it back from Mercer County Vocational School’s paint booth. A couple of months ago we figure the break was over and pulled it back into the Tampa Snap-On Tech Center to finish it.
This month’s installment is going to touch on the installation of an American Autowire (AA) Factory Fit harness. We still have a lot of components off the car so we won’t be able to power up the new harness but as car builds go, things need to be done in stages and we are at the lay wires stage. The old harness in the car had been cut and spliced so many times it wasn’t even worth saving. We wanted to install a new harness in the car, but we wanted the easiest solution possible. We contacted Michael Manning, president of American Autowire, and told him what we were trying to accomplish. He explained to us that AA has multiple options for our car, but the Factory Fit is what we needed. He said the Factory Fit line of harnesses is a true plug and play system that is used to restore the vehicle to original specifications.
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4| After the fuse block was mounted, the wires were placed in the stock locations and held
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5| The harness features the proper 12-pin flat plug for the column.
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6| American Autowire puts in all the correct details, like this secondary plug that feeds
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7| More time was spent routing the wiring under the dash. The harness fit perfectly and al
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8| The harnesses can be ordered for any factory option. Case in point this car came with a
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9| With the under dash stuff routed, we turned our focus to the rear body harness.
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10| It also routes in the factory location and is held in place by the factory metal tabs.
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11| The plug drops into the trunk right here at the edge of the package tray.
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12| The rear taillight section was hooked up to the taillights and markers. The harness ha
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13| The taillight section then plugs into the plug that we dropped into the trunk via the
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14| With the rear taken care of, we moved to the engine compartment. The backside of the f
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15| The engine and light harnesses nest together to create one plug.
AA also has the Highways Series, Builder series, Power Plus series and Classic Update kits. The Highway series kits are modular style, meaning the wires are not pre-connected to the fuse panel, and all power circuits are wired from the outside into the fuse panel—you place the fuse box and wire everything into it. The Power Plus and Builder Series kits feature integrated fuse panels that are designed to mount under the dash. All connections are done from the fuse box out requiring termination of each wire at the final connection point. The Classic Update Series kits combine aspects of a generic kit, with those of a vehicle-specific kit. Classic Update kits provide as much plug and play capability as possible, while accommodating the increased circuitry and free routing requirements of a street rod kit design.
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16| Again, now it’s just a matter of figuring out how the wires route through the engine c
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17| We know we keep beating the same drum, but this harness has all the proper plugs in al
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18| The harnesses are two components and one routes along the fender across the cowl to th
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19| Here you can see how the light harness routes along the core support. There is even an
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20| We had the front marker lights so we could actually hook those up. We still have a lot
Again, for our project the Factory Fit was the way to go since all the components in the car pretty much have a stock hook up. We may need a few upgrades in the way of an electric fan and possibly a bigger audio system, but other than that the car is pretty much stock.
Since the Factory Fit is a plug and play install, we didn’t need to hire a professional electrician, which kept some extra coin in our pocket. We were ordering other things from National Parts Depot for the Camaro, like interior items and such, so we decided to grab the American Autowire harnesses at the same time. This simplified the process and kept everything in the same shipment again saving us a little money. j
Sources
American Autowire
800/482-WIRE
americanautowire.com
National Parts Depot
800/874-7595
www.npdlink.com