I am ruminating on a project to clean my engine bay and relocate the engine fuse box while my engine is out (which has been for about 3 years so I'm not in a rush at this point).

Relocating the fusebox is essentially a wire tuck i suppose. so a question for you all who have done a wire tuck, did you solder or crimp any wires you had to lengthen? did anyone bother to shorten the harness?

I think what i've read is that without AC, the only wires you really need to lengthen are the headlights and MAP sensor? everything else you just ball up and stuff somewhere? theres got to be something else like battery power and alternator wires, right?

and where did you put the fusebox?

i know im late to this party and all the threads with pics are long gone.

for what its worth, im not relocating the fusebox for looks, just want to make room for another idea like an additional structural member.

 

I bought my car with the swap already done, so I can't comment on the actual process of HOW the person did it, i.e. crimping, sodering etc.. On my car it seems like they only lengthened the headlights and perhaps signal wires.. That said I can speak to my specific experience with the fuse-box in the passenger compartment. My car has a RyWire budget tuck harness. My engine compartment fuse-box is located on the passenger side foot well (LHD Car) with a few bolts into the body for grounding and to keep in in place. All the wires going to it also helps position it and keep it from moving.

Pros:
Looks super clean. and much less messy. Intake piping really dominates the view of that side of the engine bay. I recall that Until I moved my battery back in my engine bay I got regular comments at car meets that it looked like my engine was barely hooked up. <thumbs up?>

Cons:
Relocating the fuse box isn't a big deal as you point out, but I found that I really didn't want my battery in the hatch, so I put it back under the hood, but now I had to find a way to get power to the fuse box. The solution I ended up doing was to run rywire power leads that are properly sized from the fusebox to the alternator and starter. Then I ran simple battery cables from a chassis ground and from positive on the battery to the starter. Also I had to add grounding cables as my PO didn't believe in good grounding..

So overall if I were to start over, I'm not sure I would really do a tucked harness and thus relocated fusebox. I'm more of a function over form person. The form is nice and it looks great, but it seems like more points of failure and more complexity.

FWIW, I'm impressed with the quality of the RyWire harness and would certainly buy a custom one from them to replace the stock engine bay harness etc.

HTH,
Graham

 

Thanks for your feedback. Can you take a pic of the fuse box location? Sounds like a winning spot.

All respect to Ryan, I know his product is top quality. But I'm kind of a DIYer. I can buy my own crimp tools for less than the cost of a harness.

 

Yes, I'll try and get you a picture of all the mess soon.

 

Got a few giant pics of my engine bay fuse box mounted in my passenger side footwell. Hope this helps.

 

Thank you!