Deutsch does have DRC high vibration rated connectors. Proper crimping tools aren't cheap, may be possible to find a shop in the area that does motorsports wiring to do the job for you and cost about the same or less than buying your own tools for one job. Worth the cost if you are servicing the engine often, to avoid a DNF due to electrical issues, as stated OEM connectors are only made for assembly and maybe 2 or 3 services.
S&G Tool Aid makes crimpers for the Deutsch contacts that are decent quality and significantly cheaper than the official tools.
Tool Aid S&G 18880 Terminal Crimper + Free Shipping (amazon.com)
Looks like I'll need to figure out wire sizes to see if any of these fall into the $300 crimper range rather than the $40 crimper range. I still don't want to redo this connector but the potential for a DNF is a strong point.
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
S&G has crimpers to cover contacts from 22-12, you just have to buy them separate instead of the fancy one that does all the sizes.
Clearly this is why I stand by my off-season maintenance routine of "if it was working fine, don't berkeleying touch it!" lol. Though I'm sure my car would love to throw some codes if it actually still had the warning lights in the cluster.
Especially with 1980s electrical connectors......though I find connectors I actually made at some point in time seem to be the first ones to fail, which isn't a surprise considering my half-assed electrical work.
In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :
It certainly is positive reinforcement for negative maintenance 
Older connectors are not nearly as fragile as modern mini micro teeny tiny terminals. My Mazdas are full of what are practically discrete spade terminals in the connectors, which is fine when there are four or six, not so good when there are a few dozen. But jeez, I can remember having to work on a lot of 80s Mercedeses and the big fat round terminals in their connectors had so much spring tension you practically needed a prybar or something hydraulic to get them disconnected!
Probably 60-70% of the connectivity issues I deal with at work are loose terminals. The rest are failed wires either via corrosion or rodent damage. The only outlier is GM 3800 MAF sensor issues, where loose terminals is 100% of the issue. Those are unicorns nowadays, but I must have replaced two or three MAF pigtails a month ten-odd years ago.
I distracted myself for a while making new underbody plastics- this time I decided to run them all the way back to the rear suspension, we'll see whether this is useful for keeping rocks from pinballing around in the rear arms or not:
Then back to the tedious job of trying to help this thing work for a little longer:
I ground some needle nose pliers into a precision socket squeezer and made a mess of things- some of them were too tight and I had to open them back up a little with a pick. Once a happy medium was reached I hooked it back up and added a ziptie to the lever for snugness:
It is now more resistant to throwing codes when things are wiggled, but not immune to it. I think I may have some broken wires inside the body side of the connector, I can drive the car like this but wouldn't enter an event.
I am still on the fence about which way to go here, and am having trouble finding the body side of the harness this plugs into- I think it includes the fuse box. Options are as follows:
A) Rebuild existing connector with new parts from iWire
B) Replace harness with good used one
C) Install some sort of better connector(s) in place of what I have here
My wiring history is not great, although the deutsch connectors on my lights have been working fine. I think for option C I would need two connectors, since there are two different wire sizes running through the stock 54 pin. I would like to make a decision on this sooner rather than later but am definitely out of my element trying to scheme electrical stuffs.
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
Installing a good used one has little guarantee you won't be back in this position next year. Option C gets my vote. Deutsch connectors are pretty amazing, and if done right you have alot of confidence its not going to fail.
Option C with the 54 pins split between 2 or 3 smaller connectors.
I'm poking around, is my concern about the round connectors being hard to keep track of pins for populating initially and diagnosis later justified? There are a lot more round connector options than rectangular, it seems.
what about a new ECU harness? if its a factory part it may not be that big of a deal but it likely is pricy...
In reply to fidelity101 :
$1500 from Subaru, that harness is integrated with the fusebox.
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
we use amphenol connectors at my company. Pretty similar to deutsch connectors. they have plenty of options in rectangle, including 18 pin connectors. would work well if 54 is your goal.
https://www.amphenol-sine.com/search#/filter:ss_positions:18/filter:ss_ip_rating:67/filter:product_type_hierarchy:Connectors
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
I don't know if they have a US branch, but in our factory where we build our vehicles, we use Deutsch, Molex and Delphi connectors, since that is how the components are supplied, and most of those connectors we find on RS Components.
If they don't have local, they ship in 4 to 6 days from the UK/Europe
Edit: Here is the link to there main Homepage
I ended up ordering some Deutsch HDP20 series plugs and what I sure hope are the appropriate pins and sockets and stuff- hope this goes smoothly.
$500 parts car means a quick roadtrip:
It doesn't have a drivetrain or a key, has a salvage title, and it was an automatic, but hey, $500 and the chassis is straight other than a bend in the PS front bumper attachment region. First order of business was to cut the steering lock off it so we could push it inside at home, not certain if it has any future other than to be cut up for parts yet.
Wiring stuff arrived while we were out doing that, so yesterday was endless depinning, snipping, checking my notes, installing new ends, and building out my fancy new connectors. Hood in "insert crowbar service position" for this:
Once I got the 33 pin for the smaller wires done I hooked up the remains of the stock connector alongside it and started the car to make sure if I screwed up I'd at least know which connector it was:
Nothing seemed wrong so I shut it back off, hit the killswitch, and set about the other connector which is mostly larger power wires. After over 7 hours of standing awkwardly over the fender and 108 individual terminals, this is where I got to:
Obviously it needs tidying, strain relief, and loom, and that plate I had made needs to get welded to a bracket, but dammit it runs and no amount of wiggling the wires causes a check engine light! I didn't drive it like this because I don't want all this work ruined by flopping onto something it shouldn't, so next weekend will start with the rest of the work required to make this nice. Bye bye broken OEM connector, I hope you don't come back to haunt me somehow:
I took detailed notes so I should be able to make an adapter harness in the future, and now with the parts car I can harvest an OEM firewall side plug and wires to do that- having an adapter would allow me to drop in an engine with a stock harness in a pinch.
Wow that parts car was a total steal, you can recoup most of that money through the taillights alone! A spare chassis with subframes and glass set are handy things to have for a rally car too...
Kicked off the weekend by tidying up my wiring mess- I welded the new bracket to the existing lift hook/plug holder and tweaked the portion that normally holds just the starter wire to also anchor the main harness. I wrapped the harness up in some fancy fabric electrical tape stuff which will hopefully hold up decently:
Took the car for a drive to make sure it's all good, and so far no issues- it seems as happy as ever and has no codes:
Painted some more VW wheels, I have like 40 of these now for a total investment of under $500 although some are destined for the scrapyard due to rock damage:
Then I pulled the front swaybar brackets off the parts car to modify a bit- I use these to mount the back end of the front skidplate, and my previous iterations just had a bung and a standoff wleded to them, which worked but would bend over time as they took hits. Ultimately, I would rather this bracket bend than the chassis or the subframe, but I think I can make them a little beefier before they start hurting other things, so maybe I only have to replace them every 10 events instead of every 3-4. Step one, weld up my reinforcement piece from some square tube:
Slice:
Zap zap (forgive the welds, I was conserving shielding gas and these are sacrificial parts anyway):
And installed:
Drove it again, all is well. The biggest remaining projects for the winter are mainly interior bits and possibly making some rocker guards out of plastic to try and slow down the rocks that are rapidly thinning down the rocker panels.
We have elected not to replace the slightly crunchy DS fender before Sno*Drift since it'll probably get crunched again. The front mudflaps are also staying off since clearing snow away from the unpowered wheels is more important than keeping it off the side of the car.
Also, it's official now that The Wrecce Crew put it on a baseball card:
Even more impressive, though, is that Sara won TWO regional codriver championships:
Very nice!
What site did you end up getting the bulkhead connectors from? I'm about to start wiring up my own harness for the Miata shell I'm building, and the bulkhead connectors seem quite convenient, though Deutsch in general seems expensive, but I guess that's the price for reliability.
In reply to AWSX1686 (Forum Supporter) :
I used buydeutsch.com and it all came out to about $200, but so did both sides of a complete OEM connector from iWire so I just went for it.
Makes sense, especially in your case needing it to be super solid for competition.
Sara's Wrecce Crew cards are both on their page now so here they are:
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
I am amused that they did not use photos of the right side of the car
Looking forward to SnoDrift, its coming up fast! Some weird changes, no service on Friday.
Thoughts on tire choice? Hard to say without knowing if it will be an ice rink like this year, but a coworker did fairly well on blizzak WS90s in his VW.
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