ISO info on what products folks are using for replacement of 79 F100 wiring harness. Couldn't come up with anything on the search engine and seems like Painless does not have an exact fit replacement?

 

I recently installed an American Autowire harness. It's a really good harness. Great instructions. And their tech guys are brilliant & helpful. You can download the instructions from their website. It's an exact copy of the instructions that come with the kit. I pre-read it before ordering. Like most people, I had a bit of anxiety about installing an entire wiring harness. But it turned out to be a really enjoyable project.

As far as "exact fit", it's dang close. But you are going to have to cut and terminate a lot of wires yourself. Turn signal harness and gauge cluster harness will require some thought and work. There are so many variations between model years and trim levels, that there's just no way to make an exact harness for every vehicle. However, the instructions cover all that, and the AAW tech guys will get you straight when you're lost. I installed an aftermarket gauge cluster. AAW harnesses are set up for that. Mine even had a prewired circuit for electronic speedometer sending unit. That was helpful. There are also a lot of extra circuits that you may need to disable. But none of that is difficult. I repurposed some, deleted some, and left some in place with caps on wires and no fuses.

Like most projects, figure your initial cost, then plan on spending at least an additional 25%. Tooling, wire loom, heat shrink, additional connectors for aftermarket accessories, etc.

 

Great info, that's the one I was looking at. Thanks!

 

I'm around, and it's still fresh in my mind. Contact me if you need help while installing it.

 

There are lots of perfectly good original harness out there that's what I'd do unless a good plug and play reproduction is available. for whatever reason harness for Ford products are not reproduced by M&H who makes the only true reproduction harnesses I've ever seen.

If you take a good original and retape it and repair any defects it's perfectly fine.

 

I used the Painless 10117/10118 on my 78 F250. It is labelled as 73-77 because they did not test it on 78. My experience was that it was close enough so as to be about the same. It is more expensive than the AAW, and I am not sure it was worth it. As said before, you are probably going to have to get something as close as possible and be prepared to figure out how to modify it enough to make it work.