www.ColoradoClassicBroncos.com

So, I pretty much got my hydroboost issues figured out. Would love to take her out for a test drive and confirm that. Only one problem with that. The Bronco won't start. Ran down just about every inch of wiring to figure out what the issue was and came up with one conclusion: my wiring is bad. Can't ever recall picking up a wiring harness and having it nearly disintegrate in my hand before.

So, I'm in the market for a complete, new wiring harness and I need some recommendations. I'm leaning more towards the Centech harness right now, mostly due to price. Toying with the idea of EFI, down the road (maybe this winter) but it is a big IF for now. No real whacky additions on the truck. Pretty much a standard Bronco with a stereo, fog lamps, and 1-2 accessories.

Let's slug it out here. Painless versus Centech. Who will win my money?

I tend to go overboard............................so Painless would be my choice.

Rox Crusher wrote:I tend to go overboard............................so Painless would be my choice.

I do like that Painless claims to have had much Bronco owner input in to the creation of the harness.

So who has installed a harness recently?

I did a Centech earlier this year. I'm really happy with it-my truck fired right up the first time I tried to start it and everything worked great. The instructions with the Painless are better and it has more empty circuits to wire stuff to. I think the Centech is better bang for the buck. The other major perk with the Centech is that it is already loomed. Saved me a ton of work. Finally, their customer service is really good. I called a couple of weeks ago when my headlights stopped working thinking it was the headlight switch. They stayed on the phone with me to walk me through diagnosing it, then sent me a new high beam switch for free even after I told them it was my extra-flexy floorboard that caused it to break. I offered to pay and they said no. All told, it probably took me 15 hours to install. If you do it, spend $30 on the special tool to crimp the connectors they use. Would have saved me at least an hour of fiddling around.

+1 for the centech kit. Installed it in my dads 74 and it was great. Working with the painless on chads I didn't like that it wasn't loomed. I do like all the extra circuits to it tho.

I spent a lot of time looming my Painless. You can buy the $100.00 Painless loom kit but that puts it WAY more than the Centec. I have a H4 headlight harness, off road lights, stereo, and cigaratte lighter hooked up to mine - not sure what other circuits you would put in but there are still 4 or 5 open circuits. I just taped them off and will likely never use them again. My Painless came with my truck, but if I was buying new, it would be a Centec.

I put the Centech in about 11 years ago and it was a pain in the ass because the directions were vague. I hope that they have since updated them and tried to install the harness using the directions, because before, it was about 1/2 guesswork and 1/2 defined instruction. Past that, overall, it is a nice harness with straight forward harness setup. If you are going to do the EFI, don't worry about which company you go with, but I would get the RJM harness for the EFI. It is by far the nicest EFI harness out there.

Boy, new wiring harness almost demands you switch to EFI... Hate to spend money twice. I would think long and hard about going to EFI.

J.D.

Jesus_man wrote:Boy, new wiring harness almost demands you switch to EFI... Hate to spend money twice. I would think long and hard about going to EFI.

J.D.

Only thing is you are still going to need a good harness to get power to all the other stuff. My Centech really wasn't to be. We had one issue with a switched red wire but one quick call to Centech and they had me fixed in no time. One thing I did was add weather-pak ends to all the marker light wires as well. Expensive but well worth it IMO. Didn't like crimping wires with butt connectors after all the work Zoso did getting the wiring laid out and installed.

Not sure when you did yours, but mine came with only weather-pak connectors.

IMO, the Centech is easier to install ( plus a bit cheaper )

Jesus_man wrote:Boy, new wiring harness almost demands you switch to EFI... Hate to spend money twice. I would think long and hard about going to EFI.

J.D.

Brother, I've got nowhere near enough time or money right now to go EFI. Time being the critical factor. EFI will have to wait until this winter, at best.

Maybe whomever you talk to about buying one, you might mention that EFI is in the future and hopefully they can make what you have expandable. Really, I am not good at wiring and have never installed a new harness. My bronco needs one bad, but am afraid I'll never get it running again! So I fix as I go along. That being said, I am not sure the differences between a carb'd harness and EFI and if you can expand one into the other?? Just assuming it can be done.

J.D.

Phil can probably do a better job of explaining this, but my understanding is that the wiring part of the EFI harness just taps into the existing harness in one or two locations. Shouldn't make much of a difference in a harness replacement.

I'm thinking pretty seriously about picking up a harness this month or early next. If anyone else is potentially in the market, by all means chime in here. Enough buyers and we might be able to pull a discounted price with a mass buy.

maybe intrested in a harness let me know

May be interested as well, especially if we set up a tech day to go through an install. Will need to do some research on how to tie it in to my TBI setup first.

Too bad my wiring didn't go wonky on me last month. Painless had a 100.00 rebate going on.