What is the difficulty of removing engine wiring harness on 97 Corolla (squirrels attacked it)?

Question

Some squirrels decided to chew up the main engine wiring harness on my poor little car. The harness needs to come out of the car to repair it.

The local repair places just say it will be $80/hr and don't even know how many hours it would take to remove/install it.

Does anyone know how long it should take a mechanic to remove/install one of these?

Is this a DIY proposition? Most of the wiring has obvious plugs on the end but it's not clear what's involved in detaching the wiring that goes through the firewall & how it attaches to the fuse & relay boxes.

If you have experience with this, I'd like to hear about it.

I have lots of experience in soldering electronics so I could fix it myself, if I could just get it out of the car!

PS - it's really a Geo Prizm which is nearly identical to a Corolla.

Thanks for the insight. I've ordered a used GM shop manual and think I'll give it a try.

Any tricks to making the job easier? Parts of the harness snake under and through the intake manifold, I thought when I remove the harness I'd use it to pull some string along the wiring paths.

Answer 1

This job is mostly labor and getting access to all of the plug ins is the biggest part of the job. Much disassembly of interior components is required to get to the main harness.
My ball park guess is between 6 and 8 hours to remove and replace the harness at a shop.