I'm about to start restoring some of my harnesses, and I measured, documented, and then started to remove the tape from the driver's door harness.
I was expecting it to be wrappped in that non-adhesive vinyl tape, but it's more like hockey tape. And I think it was adhesive because it leaves black sticky mess behind.
Upon closer inspection, all of the power window harnesses are like that. Are power window harnesses normally wrapped in something different?
The other stuff like the dash and tail light harness are the vinyl I was expecting.
'64 Parisienne CS "barn find" - last on the road in '86 ... Owner Protection Plan booklet, original paint, original near-mint aqua interior, original aqua GM floor mats, original 283, factory posi, and original rust.
It's still used in European harnesses, hopefully it's somewhat close to what we have.
The bonehead mistake I made was not to note the ORIENTATION of the boots and clips. The boosts have to bolt to the door jamb in one direction only, whoops!
Just a followup, I got the TESA tape and it seems pretty close to what was on there, though the old stuff is much harder and more brittle, I assume it didn't start out that way. TESA is what's used in BMW harnesses so it's made for it, or so I'm told.
I will say this much.. it's kinda gross work. These wiring channels are all full of dirt and hair and heaven knows what. And then glued so all the carpet fibres stick to them like some hairy racetrack. Then when you unwrap them the black gooey adhesive gets everywhere and makes a mess. When I'm done though they're like new and smell a lot better.
I've been scrubbing the exterior of the harness with Simple Green and lacquer thinner. By the time you get them unwrapped they're then covered in a black sticky mess that comes off OK with lacquer thinner as well. So I scrub the bundle with green Scotch Brite and the thinner, and they come out OK. Then I rewrap and put back in the channel, clean the connectors and so on. I need some little nail files to clean some of the rustier stuff though.
I used to throw the whole thing in the bathtub with Tide and let it presoak, which worked well, but a mechanic friend advised against that - he said water gets in the wiring ends and starts corrosion. Makes sense, so I've been hand-cleaning ever since.
Here's a before and after picture (not of the same part of the harness though, I'm working branch by branch). It also includes the handy-dandy convertible top feed wire!