Wiring harness question
 

A couple months ago I bought a 1985 D30, or a M1008 CUCV pickup. It is in pretty good shape, just a very small amount of rust on the bed. The previous owner used it for pulling a big goose neck trailer around his farm, so it very rarely saw public roads. He had a 454 put in at the local repair shop, and it just has one alternator and battery now.

My issue is the taillights, dash lights, blower motor, radio, etc all seem to have issues. I think it has something to do with this "blackout" light system it has.

I would like to just remove the entire in cab harness, and replace it with a standard pickup harness. Another reason is because it has a wild looking dash cluster, with no gauges for water temp, oil pressure, etc.

Has anyone here done that, and if so what other surprises ere there when you swapped the harness? I plan on re using the front clip harness and the rear harness if I can, but maybe I should just gut the whole truck and put a painless harness in?

Re: Wiring harness question
 

The CUCV has a hybrid 24v 12v NATO compliant wiring system with dual alts on a 6.2L diesel. That wild looking cluster is mixed 24v & 12v with a warning lamp for each alt.
I've never had serious wiring issues on mine beyond the standard corroded grounds, butchered glowplug resistor wiring, and weak starter relay system. The dual alt charging system has chugged right along for me once I cleaned the charge cable and ground lugs and doused em with Wurth HHS... Don't let her hear me say that though. :D :lol:

The blackout running lights are different but unlikely to be the issue.

Bubba hacking up the harness to install the 454 could definitely cause issues. No telling what was butchered by Bubba to make the single alt almost work on the CUCV harness.

If you can find an 84 to 86 CK donor with a good cab harness and a 73-81 with a reasonable engine harness that'd be the easiest route. Making your own engine harness isn't that difficult either. There are really only 6 critical circuits on the engine itself (oil sender, temp sender, choke/oil-pressure-switch, HEI, starter start and run, alt{exciter, charge, and ground})... That's a grand total of 9 critical wires if you include the 12ga alt to batt wire.

If the blackout light units are still in one piece you can sell them on eBay to folks like me that have an unmolested CUCV and want to keep it that way. The 24v battery gauge is another salable part.