seeking advice.. my car caught on fire

[evandael]

okay so i have your attention.


i recently picked up an 87 325is that had an underhood fire. i traced the issue to a poorly installed alarm system that tapped into the lighting harness.. it's corroded and exposed at two spots, one about 4" from the fusebox and another down where it splits to the front left turnsignal.


circled is the main issue.. i wrapped in in electrical tape but it was all nasty and corroded before.





am i mistaken in assuming i can get the headlight harness from another car (in my case, an 89 325i) and splice it into the existing harness on my car? would i need to do a pin-out and remove the fusebox?




thanks in advance!

[Thizzelle]

if worried just cut old and splice in new

[evandael]

really, nothing more advanced than that? are there not different fuses for different lights (turns vs. headlights vs. fogs)

[Thizzelle]

there is a difference from cars as some have sealed beams and others have ellipsoids, read on forums and you'll find what you need to know about these. There is a convesion for sealed to ellip but it looks janky. I cut a whole fuse box from a ellipsoid car out and am going to tackle wiring it in my sealed beam car but need to do alot of investigating before I make the switch, Wire diagrams are going to ingulf me.

[evandael]

So if I wanted to run US/Euro ellipsoids, I could either a) jumper the pins on the relays with my old, sealed beam fuse box, or b) wire an entirely different fusebox from an ellipsoid car into mine?


That is kind of a diversion from my main concern.. when you say cut/splice, would it literally just be cut and soldered together? I suppose I would have to isolate each wire using a multimeter as they split from the thicker part of the harness to each individual lead?

[evandael]

anyone else have experience with this?