Another Painless Problem

[SenorCole86]

RE: 87 Comanche For Sale!!!!

The Painless kit engine harness is designed so that it can be used in any engine ever put in a CJ, meaning everything is generic. I'm having trouble figuring out where to hook up the starter solenoid and alternator. I have a remote solenoid and a Delco internal regulator alternator. I have a bundle of three wires marked ALT which contains a bundle of two big red wires marked AH.B+ and another unmarked brown wire. I also have another bundle of wires marked START SOLENOID. I this group, there are two red wires marked MAXIFUSE, one brown one marked COIL+, an unmarked red/white wire, and a light blue wire marked START. I hooked the light blue wire up to the start terminal of the solenoid and a brown wire from elsewhere marked I TERM to the ignition terminal. Now I'm stuck. I don't know which wires should be plugged into the coil, starter solenoid, and alternator and how. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot.

 

[SenorCole86]

Uneven brake shoe wear

Sorry guys, I don't wanna be a jerk, but I need to be able to drive this thing to work tomorrow. Has anybody ever hooked one of these things up before? Any help at all would be great.

 

[jay79cj7]

Understanding where they intended the wires to go was the worst part of the install in my experience as well. The painless kit is not so painless as advertised. It is sold as if it will plug right in, but it is made generic, so you have to modify it to fit whatever you are using. I ended up removing the wire covers and tape so I could see where everything was running to and from. This helped understand what was going on in this harness a great deal, so I would highly recommend it. You can just tape it back together and make it nice and clean when you are done.

I have an aftermarket alternator that doesn't use the regulator wire. I think that is what the brown one is for in the ALT group, so I can't really help there.

The positive terminal of the alt should go to the battery side terminal of the solenoid, so that there is always a connection between the alt and the bat. Then the heavy gauge wire that runs back to power everything inside the Jeep should be hooked to the same terminal. Painless provides the maxi-fuse to splice into this line to protect the downstream components. I mounted mine on the fender right next to the solenoid.

The starter wire goes to that post on the solenoid as you mentioned. I used the other post on the solenoid to go to the coil as a ballast bypass. I think if you don't use the bypass it should work with nothing there.

Let me know if you need anything else.

 

[SenorCole86]

Ok, thank you very much. Did you end up with threee stray wires sticking out of your ignition module? I hooked the module up just like the instructions read and I'm three wires short. One of them is black, so I imagine it is a ground, so I'll probably end up hooking it up just in case. The other two are orange and purple, both from the four way connector. Oh, by the way, I have the motorcraft electronic ignition. Thanks a lot.

 

[jay79cj7]

I'm not sure what you mean by 3 stray wires sticking out of the ignition module, so I guess the answer is no. I did have some unused wires through the setup, but they were mostly accessory related (A/C, elec fan, etc), and definitely not ignition. Follow your old harness as a guide to see which wires go where. There are 6 wires between the 2 plugs. 3 go straight to the distributor, I think one is hot, one is from the coil, and I don't recall where the other went. I assume you need to use them all. I found that some of the wires that go to the module were on the passenger side of the harness and some were on the driver side. Obviously that is a problem... I thought I was doing something wrong when I came to that conclusion, but reviewing the old harness helped immensely. I had to reroute some of the wires to get them all on the same side.

PS. Their customer service sucks. I went through their e-mail customer service on a number of questions and they were really no help. I had to figure it all out on my own. When I figured out the ballast resistor issue that I told you about in the other post, I went back to them explaining the issue and how I was out the cost of a module and coil b/c their harness is not set up to delivery the proper voltage to the coil. I got no response at all.

 

[ndnatty]

Senorcole, did you get to work this morning? Hope jay79's desciption worked for you. I had to wrestle with the same issues on my 79 cj7 while installing the "painless" wiring harness. Unfortunately I removed the old harness without making note of the connections, so I had to go through some trial and error to get it all figured out, but it works and don't have any extra wires that I know of. One thing though, should try and solder all the end terminals. I have had loads of problems with my crimp connections; had the jeep die on my a few times due to loose or broken connections. Just FYI. Good luck!

 

[SenorCole86]

Hrmm, ok, thanks, I'll have to go back and fix it up later but now I'm just concentrated on getting it running. I found the terminals on my coil were rusted off and just crumbled when I took the connectors off. I have no idea how it was running before. The MSD coil won't come in until day after tomorrow so I found a ride to work for the next couple of days. Thanks a lot everyone!