Started into a head gasket job and disconnect the main wiring harness to get the intake manifold off.  It looks to me like someone was messing with the harness.  It looks like electrical tape on individual wires in the bundle.....odd. This car is new to me, bought it in March,  '07 Outback. Dodged a bullet as the harmonic balancer pulley which had a serious wobble, checked the end crank bolt and backed it off with my fingers and pulley came right off.  The woodruff keyway was bent which damaged the harmonic pulley but not the TB tooth pulley. I just need to get a new harmonic pulley and keyway, no damage to the crank end. No wonder I was getting miss fire codes. Thoughts on the wiring harness?

 

Thanks!

Hard to say for sure.

There are sheilded wires in the engine harness and often the sheilding is taped over at the ends where it goes through the connector. The sheild braid is joined to a wire. The wire goes through a pin in the connector and then re-joins the sheild braid on the other side.

 

The protective wire loom is always taped at the ends to hold it on.

Mine was the sasme 2009 OBW, I really disliked how some of the wires are 'finished off'. I used some large protective sleeve and shrinkage tape (vulcanised over itself). Though most of these electronics are for communications i think (lamps and sensors), but correct me if I am wrong.