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Wiring Shenanigans on a 96?

2K views 16 replies 7 participants last post by  Will-S10 
#1 ·
Hello! After all this time of bugging you guys on here I'm very slowly starting to acquire some parts for an 4.8/5.3 swap on my s10, I have a couple questions though about the wiring aspect. Possible too keep the stock gauges? and how the heck does one mangle the wiring harness too get everything working on the swap? Its the one part I cant wrap my head around at all. And is the wiring more difficult on the 96 trucks? from what ive been told it is.
 
#4 ·
Depending on your timeframe, budget, and skill level with a bucket full of colored spaghetti, you might want to budget for it. Others have done it, but it's not for the electrically light hearted. We considered it to be worth the investment.
 
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#5 ·
Unless you are fairly proficient at wiring I have to agree with @Rhotpursuit. Get a harness from CPW. I'm quite comfortable with and pretty good at automotive wiring. I've built TBI and TPI harnesses from scratch, but it took me over a month to build my 99 S10 LS harness. You're going to be altering or rerouting 100's of wires. Just the coils and injectors require 34 wires and that's one of the easiest sections to do. I had both the S10 and Escalade wiring diagrams, but ended up copying nearly 100 other subsection diagrams from ls1tech.com and lt1swap.com. Also bought a $400 HP Tuners MVPI2 to turn various programs on or off in the PCM. HPT does not work on a 96 or 97 so you'll also need to upgrade your PCM to 98+. Which means more wiring changes. If you have an automatic and want A/C, cruise, and DBW That's another 50 wires and some modules.
As far as your gauges go, if you utilize all your original sensors they'll work fine. It's when you get to 98+ that the gauges are fed data rather than the analog 12V signals 97 down use. When you switch to the 98+ PCM in your truck you just won't be using the serial data wires because there's nothing that needs it on your truck. On the later 98+ trucks those 2 wires control the gauges, the BCM, and security among other things. That's the reason GM went to data, it eliminates a lot of wires and they were running out of room under the dash.
From what I understand even with a CPW harness you'll be spending some time working on the wiring.
This summer i plan to redo my whole wiring system because I simply don't like the way it looks. Everything works as it should, but guys like @Rhotpursuit set the bar so high I feel like my mess looks amateurish.
 
#6 ·
@Harley reworked a number of wires to tidy things up. The lose wires in the harness are labeled as to where they go. There are some wiring posts in my build thread here...

 
#7 ·
The other wiring issues with these trucks that are commonly overlooked, is most of these harnesses are 20+ years old.
Wires break, connectors melt, things become brittle after spending 2 decades under a warm hood.
The CPW harness what’s the best investment I made while doing this swap. I’ve never had an issue
 
#10 ·
This is a lot easier.

The 0411 PCM is much better than the one in the 96 and you don't need to buy expensive software to tune it: Getting Started with Free/Open-Source PCM Tuning It can be used with the 4.8 and 5.3(stick with Drive by Cable) as well as the 5.7 if that was the route you wanted to go,

It can all be done, just depends on what you are comfortable with and what you want to learn.
 
#12 · (Edited)
Sure, was just letting him know some options as it didn't seem like it was covered here before.

Edit: the only reason I mentioned it was because ODS mentioned $400 to turn stuff on/off/etc and there are other options for those that might not have the extra $ or whatever.

If I have stepped on someones toes, I apologize.
 
#14 ·
Could be because I posted about it in one thread, searched to see if I could find others talking about it and didn't find anything. Then I created a more thorough(3part WIP) thread linked/posted above. So even though it was only posted in two users threads, may have seemed like a lot in a short period of time.
 
#15 ·
My mention of HP tuners and what it cost was based partially on having seen a number of the OP's previous posts. I recommended HPT because it is a simple trusted reliable system for tuning. You simply buy the system and install it's App on your laptop. Then you can make any changes that you'd like.
There are other open source 0411 tuning apps out there, but all I've seen are written for Geeks to use. Since there is no support.
LS Droid is one that works with most of todays phones.
Some tuning parameters require altering a number of different places in the tune to accomplish a result. HPT is laid out so that it automatically makes all the necessary changes when 1 item is changed, that requires other changes to work. An example would be changing the speedometer input to use a different size tire. In HPT you simply enter the new size in the final drive wizard. W/o out it you need to know the loaded diameter of the new tire and do some calculations to arrive at the number for the final drive effective ratio to enter into the computer.
 
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