# Finding car wiring connectors?



## Kaz (Dec 21, 2001)

I've always been averse to snipping off connectors in cars to make mods, fix stuff, etc. and have always tried to find ways to do things without making such irreversible changes.

I've been pretty successful with various techniques so far, but I wonder if there are certain types of connectors that are at least semi-inductry standard to make things a little easier. Obviously they DO exist, since most aftermarket companies seem to have access to them. I've seen certain ones available from dealers, but not always.

A good example is a connector used in BMWs going back to the 80s, and used in places like the horn, sidemarkers, brake fluid reservoir, windshield washer heater, etc. But only the male end is available as a part from the dealer, since in all applications, that's the end on the wiring, and the female end is always molded into the component. Today, I disassembled a sidemarker to build a better wiring adapter for my airhorns.

Anyone have any tricks or secret sources for these things?


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## ObD (Dec 29, 2001)

A junkyard is my preference for low volume connector retrieval and purchase. Most of the time I've gotten them for free.


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## Kaz (Dec 21, 2001)

ObD said:


> *A junkyard is my preference for low volume connector retrieval and purchase. Most of the time I've gotten them for free.  *


That's not the problem. The connector in the correct gender doesn't EXIST on any car (at least any BMW).


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## Terry Kennedy (Sep 21, 2002)

Kaz said:


> *The connector in the correct gender doesn't EXIST on any car (at least any BMW). *


They seem to exist, at least in the sizes I've looked for. For example:

61.13.1.376.193 - male pin, medium size, pin only
61.13.1.376.202 - female pin, medium size, pin only
61.13.0.007.452 - male pin, medium size, with pigtail wire
61.13.0.007.450 - female pin, medium size, with pigtail wire
88.88.6.611.132 - tool, pin removal, medium size


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## Kaz (Dec 21, 2001)

Terry Kennedy said:


> *
> They seem to exist, at least in the sizes I've looked for. For example:
> 
> 61.13.1.376.193 - male pin, medium size, pin only
> ...


Except that those connector pins (the bottom two) are used in the DWA, power rear shade, and parts of the HVAC, not what I was looking for for this project. That's part of the problem. Certain connectors are available for both genders, but not all of them.


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## Terry Kennedy (Sep 21, 2002)

Kaz said:


> *Certain connectors are available for both genders, but not all of them. *


Well, I just picked some that I happened to be aware of. If you look at the connector housing, hopefully it says which manufacturer it is, which would let you select generic pins. You might want to look at Molex, Amphenol, and AMP.


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## Kaz (Dec 21, 2001)

Pins usually aren't a problem. The housing usually is. Reading other people's experiences in the past, it seems most car manufacturer proprietary connectors are NOT available from the connector OEMs (AMP/Molex/etc.). Even if there are some (like the one I needed for this specific project), I need to figure out a way of figuring out what the equivalent PN is without looking at literally tens of thousands of connectors that a company like AMP makes.


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## Terry Kennedy (Sep 21, 2002)

Kaz said:


> *Pins usually aren't a problem. The housing usually is. *


This seems to be going in a different direction from the way I interpreted your original post. In any event...

Once you find out the industry-standard pin for the connector you are interested in, buy some of the pins in both male and female, the pin insertion/removal tool, and an assortment of generic male/female connector shells in a variety of pin counts.

To make a reversible mod, just extract the pin(s) from the OEM shell using the insertion/removal tool, insert them into a generic shell, and proceed from there.


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## Kaz (Dec 21, 2001)

Terry Kennedy said:


> *
> This seems to be going in a different direction from the way I interpreted your original post. In any event...
> *


Yeah, I think you're interpreting what I want differently. Oh well.


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