yep. its pretty wild. it happens when a seasoned mechanic is told "get the car running no matter what, but as safely and quickly as possible" before wrx motor swaps were common place.

the car basically has 2 wiring harnesses co-existing where there should only be one. Given the state of the connectors and the fact that i was getting all sorts of funny readings from random sensors, not to mention being left stranded (the final straw). I decided it was time to replace this harness.

Its become a huge project ( in my eyes). So far I've had to:

-hunt down a 99 RS bulkhead harness
-hunt down a 02-03 WRX bulkhead harness and bulkhead to engine harness
-Find someone to do the harness merge. Gotta leave that to the pro's. I was referred to Brian Keene aka I-Wire from a fellow RS owner at a local shop.
-Take apart the entire interior, down to the dashboard and everything underneath it.

-WRX harness in a box


-Brian came over and started to do some diagnostics on the car and we concluded that regardless of what caused the car to stop running correctly, we need to swap the harness out. He took out most of the dash and console in about 1 hour taking his time, that's why I have no pics.

I decide, If I'm going to do this, I might as well fix everything else related, like the stereo wiring and stereo setup, along with the alarm.

I started gutting the car.


Ghetto amp mounts and massive amounts of poorly routed wire.


extra speed sensor plugs (more butt connectors)


non existent wrx cruise control