Anywhere along the cutout, not just the area around the plug

 

Okay fellas,

I just bought a torque wrench, a special impact socket, a high torque impact driver, a low profile jack, jack stands, hockey pucks, a miter saw to cut the pucks to size, a lift, and a new house with a garage to fit the lift. I think I'm finally ready to do the job…

Well, I’m only half kidding about all the equipment I needed to purchase, but here’s the latest update: I did it!

I ended up getting the wire into the engine bay by removing the fender liner as suggested by a couple members. Here’s what I did…

Jacked the car, which I was very nervous about. (I kept wondering whether I had the jack in the correct spot and thinking that at any moment I’d hear the ghastly sound of a metal piece of the body bending and deforming with each hapless pump of the jack.)

I bought a pair of JackPoint JackStands - which I highly recommend. For those not familiar with them, they’re meant for cars that don’t have a convenient point to mount a jack stand. They solve the problem by placing the jackstand at the same point you use for jacking/lifting the car. (I won’t delve into detail about how they work. Their website and YouTube videos demonstrate how they function much better than I can explain with words.)

I cut a hockey puck up and used this as my jack adapter. I’m in the process of designing and fabricating an aluminum version, but the hockey puck did the trick for now.

As a noob, this whole process took me way longer than it should have. Maybe 5 hours total, but some of that time involved assembling and figuring out how to work the jack, detailing the wheel well and wheel (since I had the wheel off anyway), and (still) struggling to get the hanger and wires through the rubber grommet (on the passenger side).

A couple tips for fishing the wire:

Tip 1: Get the hanger through first. (I’ve seen videos where people tape the wire - which often has a connector of some sort on the end of it - to the end of the hanger and try to get this fat assemblage through the hole. Much easier to get the hanger in first and tape the wire to someplace along the length of the hanger.)

Tip 2: If the connectors on your wires are too big, lop the suckers off and solder them later. Okay, so maybe I did that out of frustration. Then again, the front camera that I’m installing came with wires with both a large 12V connector and a big yellow RCA connector, so to be fair, they were pretty ginormous.

I've posted photos below.

Thank you everyone for all the tips and advice. I find working with these cars to be a fascinating learning experience and do appreciate all the help and great suggestions from the community on this forum.

By the way, this was only one step in a huge (for me) project. I’m in the process of drafting a post for this entire project, so stay tuned...



Car on JackPoint Jackstand





My hockey puck jack adapter





Eureka! moment when I found the hanger poking into the engine bay

 

Congrats on a job well done!

 

Thanks, and again, I appreciate your helpful PM and suggestions!

 

Anytime.. Happy to help.