replacement engine wire harness connectotrs

The connector shells are all identified by function, picture, and part number in the back of your wiring diagram manual on techinfo.toyota.com. So that part's easy, you look up the connector shells you need and order them by part number, and there they are on your doorstep.

The crimp terminals that go in the shells might be a different story; at least my 2001 wiring diagram doesn't have the part numbers for those, though perhaps in newer manuals they could be included. I have to talk with the parts counter people at my local dealer; when I give them the connector-shell part numbers, they have databases they can look in to find the part numbers of the proper terminals to go in them.

The standard way Toyota sells replacement terminals is pre-crimped onto a short length of wire, so you don't have to deal with crimping the terminals, and can just cut and splice the wire a few inches back. That's ok, but if you don't like the way these pre-crimped replacements are somewhat inflated in price, or that the short length of wire is pretty much always the wrong color to match what you're replacing, you find the dealer won't sell you just the crimp terminals on their own. At least my dealer parts window people won't sell them to me.

When that happens, I usually buy one of the overpriced pre-crimped terminals from the dealer, head down the road to my local independent auto electric shop, show him the terminal, and say "do you have just the uncrimped terminals matching this?". So far, the answer has always been yes, and every time I ask him where he got them, he says the same dealer that won't sell them to me. One time he had a few but not as many as I needed, so he called me later that afternoon after going to the same dealer I couldn't buy them from, and restocking. Go figure.

-Chap

 

Like most automobile manufacturers, Toyota uses the AMP Inc-designed "F-Crimp" for most wire termination applications.

This crimp gives a "gas-tight" connection without the use of solder.

Indeed, applying solder to an F-Crimped connection can, and most probably will, lead to failure due to wire fracturing.

F crimp - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

F-Crimp dies are pretty expensive, but the die frame is pretty reasonable, and even the likes of "Horror Freight" has a die frame which accepts Ideal and Eclipse Lunar dies.

The Ideal F-Crimp die is its number 30-586, possibly out of production.

 

Thanks -- always nice to learn something new every day

More info:
Wiring Harness Terminals

 

Toyota is large enough that it may be using a proprietary connector shell style which their design engineers created, and which may be made in-house.

The "precision formed" contacts are possibly a different matter, but Toyota documents I have examined leads me to believe that Toyota's "high density" connectors are indeed 100 percent in-house, or are supplied by a partly Toyota-owned affiliate, such as Denso.

Toyota is still free to use, and logic dictates that Toyota would use, F-Crimps, even for its in-house connectors. Creating a new crimp style in view of nearly a century of positive results with F-Crimps would be foolish.

 

The reason I mentioned Toyota's way of selling the terminals was not to express an opinion on whether F crimp terminals are good or bad ... only to report that Toyota doesn't sell (over the parts counter) the raw terminals so you could crimp them yourself. If you go to the parts window, you can only buy them already crimped onto short lengths of the wrong color wire, and then you have to make a Frankenstein repair where you splice this wire to the original wire in your harness.

If you do have access to a crimper and you prefer not to make a Frankenstein repair, the only way to get the terminals raw is to go to your local indy auto electric shop. He happily sells them to me, and he gets them from the same dealer that won't sell them to me. So clearly, the dealer does have them, and he knows the right person to talk to, and I (still) don't.

-Chap