Re: 1955-56 manual overdrive transmission

Posted by HH56 On 2015/12/4 16:37:01

Quote:

First and foremost there are several portions of the harness. If you are going to buy a new portion you will have to find where the problem lies and replace or repair the correct parts. The front harness covers the dash and engine. Body harness connects to the front portion under dash and goes to rear. Windows are a separate harness and so is push button shift if you have that option. The front harness does contain a couple of extra wires and some that are relocated for the push button shift so it is important to get the correct one. Other accessories have separate wires or even small harnesses which you do need to keep track of as they sometimes connect to the main.

Basically you disconnect everything in the engine compartment going to the main harness so you have the various tails free and clear and connected to nothing except each other at the trifurcation point at the firewall opening. There are numerous connections and directions the wires go so there is not really a step by step. Once things appear to be clear remove the grommet retainers and pull everything into the passenger compartment.

it is a project working under the dash and also a project to pull the dash out but I would seriously consider getting a helper and removing the dash to do all that confined work in the open. If your car has factory indash AC I don't think there is an option other than to remove. Once everything new is connected under the dash you then only have to feed the long tails in the loom thru the hole in the firewall as you and the helper lift the dash back. IMO, it is a piece of cake in the engine compt compared to working under the dash.

If you don't want to go to that extreme then the option is to spend hours on your back trying to see and reach places that are not going to co-operate. If you go the non removal way I suggest you remove the front seat and get padding as needed to get as comfortable as you can. It will be a long stretch of work. A couple of nice cool burning magnetic trouble lights you can stick out of the way on either side of the instrument cluster is a big help.

There is information on what is involved pulling the dash and a tiny bit on the main harness disconnect in this manual showing dealers how to install factory AC in the field. They did go to extremes in the manual and it is not necessary to remove everything they did just to remove the dash -- but it does show the attachment points and provide some guidance.https://www.packardinfo.com/xoops/html/downloads/55-56ACInstall.pdf