Art -- I know the feeling...

I've seen a link to a web page which someone posted on replacing a harness -- I think it might've been WBain, though I'm not certain. Dig around and follow the links and you'll find it sooner or later.

Here's my suggestion for rolling your own. Start with a roll of masking tape and a magic marker and make up labels for each and every connection. Don't worry about the function name if you don't know it -- names like 'sensor right behind the alternator' work just fine. Once everything is labeled, then you can start disassembling it because if you change your mind, you'll know where everything goes back.

Remove the harness. The sheath under the crank pulley is a bitch because engine heat tends to harden it. Keep working at it. Loosening the intake manifold is probably wise so you can slip the harness out and up from underneath. That will give you an excuse to replace the intake manifold gasket.

Once you've got the harness off the motor, cut the sheaths apart to separate the wires. Now you'll see it isn't all that bad -- just numerous copies of a wire connecting point A with point B. Your job is to make up fresh wire for each of these connections. Cut off the Bosch special plugs leaving about an inch of wire remaining and strip off the insulation. You'll solder a fresh wire onto that plug connection and heat-shrink some insulation (NAPA, among others, sells spools of wire of various colors, male/female connectors, and heat shrink). Regular male/female connectors get replaced with new ones. Use heat-shrink on each solder joint.

Build your new harness and install it on the motor as you go, one wire at a time. But this time, run the wires away from the block to the fender, up the fender, across the firewall, and down the other fender and back to the block. This way you avoid heat and oil. When you're all done, bundle your new wires in that flexible plastic split loom to protect them.

Time investment -- maybe 8 hours? $$$ investment -- less than $50.

Rob Kuhlman