UPDATE:

Our neighborhood troubles are mostly behind us. I haven't been on here lately because we've been busy MOVING. We're not only out of that dreadful neighborhood, we are out of that city (and county). The place we're at now is a great, safe neighborhood with good neighbors.

There is only one negative to the whole thing: the Excursion is still sitting at our old place.

Out of the necessity of being inexpensive and available now, we bought a mobile home in a small trailer court (but the court is in the country). One of the rules they are pretty strict on is that all vehicles have to run, drive and be plated. I have the plated part taken care of, but we all know my issues with the running and driving part- and after buying the mobile home and moving expenses, there isn't a ton of money left.

The way I see it, I have easy things to deal with and hard things to deal with in getting the Ex worthy enough for the trailer park (I know, right?)

EASY-
1- Brakes: booster, master cylinder, lines off of the master cylinder and driver side rubber brake line.
2- Cooling system: radiator, upper hose, engine fan, belt
3- Engine: throttle body, throttle cable, misc hoses

HARD-
1- Body: dark green hood, grille. Because mismatched colors and a busted grille will draw attention to it.
2- Electrical: that darned engine bay harness, transmission/transfer harness.

I still can't find the engine bay harness. I'm thinking about getting a truck harness and replace it's fuse box with an Excursion box (then add the Excursion-only wiring later). There are a couple of Excursion fuse boxes on Ebay, but the sellers always cut the wiring off of them. Most of the underhood wiring is the same between the Ex and the trucks- the Ex just has additional wires that either go into the cab or under the body. All I need to figure out is how to remove wires out of the fuse box without damaging their connector ends.

I really only need it to be able to "drive" into the park to my trailer, then occasionally start up and move. The whole plan is to have it here with me- not stored in some lot or something. So that's the temporary direction this project is taking- and as quickly and cheaply as possible.

 

Are you set on pulling this harness yourself ? How much time is involved in pulling it ? I am in Northern California just outside Sacramento and excursions are fairly plentiful here due to the largish metropolitan and suburban communities with a close proximity to Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada mountains. In the excursions hey day it was the THE SUV of choice for soccer moms around here. There are always several on Craigslist and in yards being parted out. Search Sacramento Craigslist and if you can find what you are looking for I would be will to go pull it for you if the seller doesn't want to do it.

Oh ya.... Love the build and thank you for your service to our country.

 

Good to hear you made it to safety. I think we were all very concerned. Things like that put life in perspective.

As far as wiring goes I just got through putting in 6 new Infinity speakers, wiring in an Infinity subwoofer AND ACTUALLY HAD IT WORK OUT OF THE GATE

I had to solder into 9 wires of one of the radio wiring harnesses. What a PIA! Dark green with an orange stripe, lt green with an orange stripe, gray with an orange stripe, etc etc. As many colors exist in the world, single colored wires would be much appreciated. At least the ACC connection was all pink. It took forever to find wiring diagrams that had colors and + and -'s. Good luck hooking all that crap up.

 

Nah, I'm not set on pulling it myself. It's not that hard really. In my opinion, the two hardest parts are the horn and the wiper motor. Everything else is just a series of unplugging things, unbolting a few grounds and freeing the harness from various holders. I had mine out in about an hour, and that included dealing with melted plastic here and there.

My main problem is that people like to cut on the harnesses- if they need a part, rather than unplugging it, they cut it free from the harness side. Almost no one ever needs this harness, but when one guy does (me), then all of a sudden, the seller thinks it is made out of gold. People are wanting between 150 and 300 for this harness used, knowing darned well that if I don't buy it, it'll either get hacked or scrapped with the remains of the vehicle it's on. IMO, it's a 50 dollar part...

 

You should have hit me up. I have that diagram.

 

I ACTUALLY PUT PARTS ON TODAY!!!

I'm preparing for the 28-mile flat tow-rope pull (no trailer), so I had to get the brakes working again. I picked up a booster with the master cylinder still attached, from a truck that had known working brakes. Then I had to deal with the melted brake hose on the driver side front. Did the Autozone thing there. $55 bucks later, I have working brakes.

Unfortunately, I went to drop the rear driveshaft and cracked the Craftsman socket straight away. I didn't have another of that size with me, so I coated the bolts with PB Blaster and went home.

We'll be doing the tow late at night, so I borrowed some magnetic towing lights for the job. The reason for the late night tow is- I'm not supposed to have a non-running vehicle where I live, so we're going to sneak it in and move it from spot to spot every so often until I get her running.

The only thing that worries me is the severely damaged grille. The whole top piece is busted out, and you can see right into the engine compartment (because the top of the header panel is busted out too). I *think* what I'm going to do to temporarily remedy this is trade grilles with the Super Duty (people see it run every day, so a broken grille won't draw any attention). That'll close up the ability to peek into the Ex's engine compartment.

 

Just an FYI, there is an Excursion club on Facebook, I just joined a couple days ago and already have seen a couple people parting out Excursions. Might be worth a try?

 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Ford...nClub/?fref=nf

 

I ran into the same issue when finding the harnesses for my engine swap. I ended up having to pay the over $500 for the dash harness and under-hood harness and I have not seen any come up for sale since then.

Good luck on the harness.

 

I belong to that group. One guy has a harness, but I've not heard back from him.

 

Got bored tonight and decided to mess around with the old underhood fuse box. I had kept it, leaving about 6 or 8 inches of the wires coming out of it, just in case I had to piece together a harness.

The first step was breaking away any melted plastic from the lid that would hinder getting at the connectors. Next, I removed all the fuses and relays (most of which were melted on top anyway).

Everything that you see in there that is red- pretty much just lifts right out. They all seemed to be "friction fit" into place. Once you get all the red plastic out of the way, you can see the connectors a whole lot better. I was able to free every single wire in there, using nothing but a TINY straight-blade screwdriver (from an eyeglass repair kit).

So now I know I can remove/reinsert wires from the underhood fuse box.

The next step is finding my notes! If I remember correctly, the only difference in the engine bay harness between an early Excursion and an early Super Duty (other than the fuse box) is the Excursion-only wiring that goes from the box to the firewall connectors. I am 95% sure I could bolt in a Super Duty harness (and fuse box) and it would work- just certain Excursion-only accessories would be dead.

So, I could go about this 2 different ways:

1) Send $200 to a guy on Facebook that I have never met, and pray I get sent an Excursion harness in return (no offense to the guy with the harness- but this kind of stuff over the Internet is risky and does happen).

2) Buy the Excursion harness local to me that has been hacked on- but the hacked wires are the same wires in a Super Duty harness (the Excursion-only wires to the firewall are unharmed) AND buy a Super Duty harness, then join them together for an investment of about $50 total.

I'm guessing the readers of this thread are going to vote for option 2- just because there would be more pics involved. Y'all are sick like that...

 

Should have never gave the option.

 

I'd buy the local hacked on harness and then just go threw and fix the hacking job while sitting on the couch in the living room watching tv at night.

 

Agreed with option two. Shouldn't be too bad and you will know for sure that it is a good harness when complete.

 

Made the big tow tonight. I started by dropping the driveshaft in the dark with a tiny flashlight held in my mouth. Threw on the magnetic lights and rolled out.

About halfway through the tow, the driver side front caliper started sticking (the fire side, so I'll be changing the caliper soon). I could tell when it would stick- it took both hands white-knuckling the steering wheel just to keep it straight. It would unstick after about a quarter mile... just to stick again when I had to use the brakes.

Once I got it home, I moved all the parts to the cargo area and set the seats back up. That way, if someone looks inside, it doesn't look suspiciously like it might not run. I also swapped out the grille with my truck.

Now it's time to sleep it off- that was stressful...