Jammed screwdriver into engine wiring harness - Engine no longer shuts off

Made a huge mistake yesterday when installing a backup camera. While trying to punch a hole through the drivers side firewall grommet (using advice from here and using a flathead screwdriver) I misjudged the angle (and thickness of the gromet) and punched into the "Engine Room Main Wire". I realized the mistake when the horn blared when I punched too far.

Everything seemed okay and the backup camera worked, but when I went to shut off the truck the engine did not shut off and the dashboard stayed lit up (despite me taking out the key).

Jiggling the wiring harness causes it to get the connection it needs and shuts it off.

I realize it's a very dumb and potentially costly mistake - Just looking for any advice? I 'propped' up the wiring harness right now which allows me to drive it normally. My plan is to try and disconnect everything the wiring harness is connected to so I can pull the harness into the engine bay where I can get better access to it, then individually tape the affected wires. Is this even reasonably possible to do? Not sure I will be able to unplug enough connectors to get the slack I need to pull the wiring harness into the engine bay, but there does not seem to be enough room to do anything under the dash where the screwdriver would have made contact.

Anyway - Any advice or other ideas on how to approach this would be helpful.

Thanks all.

 

Damn bud! Sorry to hear. Punching through those grommets (especially driver side) is definitely a scary thing.

My only suggestion (and I may be way off her; hopefully others can chime in) might be to pull into the cab instead of into the engine bay. It might be easier to disconnect everything in the engine bay than under the dash. And it’ll probably be easier to solder/tape the wires under the dash near the pedals than tucking your hands way down the firewall. Anyway, just my $.02.

welcome to the forum!

 

If you can open up the sheathing and figure out which wire(s) are compromised, then you could individually slide the two wire halves apart, so you have a tail in the cab and a tail in the engine bay, then I would add a couple inch extension so you can solder/crimp/do whatever easily on both ends and splice them back together.

 

I would determine which wires are damaged and cut them only once about a foot or so away from the grommet. Then pull out the long tail to expose the damage and repair it without cutting if possible. Heat shrink insulate the repair. Then push a fishing tool like hanger wire through the grommet hole and tape the long tail to it and pull it through. Lastly slip heat shrink insulation on, mend with solder, and properly insulate.

 

Thanks all. Followed some of the advice here as I was not able to disconnect the wiring harness on either side. Removing the sheathing to find the impacted wires was a b!tch (ended up having to slice the grommet down on one side to get it off and out of the way, and even then the wires are a mess of glue and sheathing that made finding the 4 impacted wires very hard. With the help of the bro we taped a few and cut/soldered one with about the most difficult access solder imaginable.
Still some clean-up work to be done to shrink-wrap some of the other exposed wires (currently taped) and get the grommet back in, but the truck survived a 5 hour drive overnight to get me where I need to be to spend a bit more time on it.

TLDR - Didn't need to part it out

Thanks again.

 

This grommet here with the red arrow? You can unplug several junction connectors, approx. 10, and pull the whole light blue harness out of the cab into the engine bay. This will give you the room to work around it and fix it correctly.

 

That is great to know - Thank you It seemed a bit futile in my rush last night with everything clipped and taped up in the cab - I will definitely do that to take out and fix it properly though.