Anyone Tried Replacing the Entire Wiring on Their E36?

[halcrontech]

I just have a front left light and rear left brake light failure. I have managed to traced the problem to a wiring fault (there is no voltage on the cables).

Well, since my E36 is over 15yrs old, wiring problems are bound to appear from time to time. Rather than fixing the problem and waiting for others to pop up, I am wondering is it possible to replace the entire wiring (excluding the engine harness), on the E36? I wanted to repalce all the front/rear lights, instrument cluster and cabin ligths etc with new wires so I won't face any of such issues anymore.

Is it possible to do that and if so, any shop that will provide such services? Roughly how much will it cost?

Btw, I have noticed on realoem.com that there are wiring harness sets for my car. Looks like its meant for the lights.

RealOEM.COM   BMW E36 318is CABLE HARNESS SECTOR REAR

Is that what I need?

Thanks for the help!

 

[jonoUK]

Re: Anyone Tried Replacing the Entire Wiring on Their E36?

My E36 is 17yrs old and I am just about to take it off the road for a full overhaul and this is one of the tasks I plan to do but not with any relish. It is pretty straight forward to rewire an e36 but time consuming and easy to make a mistake, I would imagine it would be well expensive to get a shop to do it, as it requires removing the dash, centre console, door cards, headliner, seats, carpets - pretty much everything. This is not an issue for me as I plan on getting a respray so will have to do this anyway.
In the e36 most of the wiring is behind glove box and bundled together into 2 or 3 large female connectors so you can do one at a time. I would advise you to get a Bentley manual as this has complete electrical wiring diagrams for the e36 PM me if you want to borrow mine but there are some differences between the US and Euro models
When rewiring cars I also replace all the connectors as these get brittle and the contacts corrode over time - I also label each circuit with masking tape and whether its + ve or GND. If you have an issue when testing it makes it much easier to track this down. Get a good quality digital multimeter and test the resistance as well as just continuity.

A word of caution about the OEM wiring harness link - make sure you can get one for a RHD they are different to the LHD ones if I remember correctly

Regards

Jon