so there's a 89 xt in the north spokane pull and save.  it's a ea82 and auto, but my engine wiring is fine, its just headlights and the fog lights, and probably the power steering but im going to ignore that for now. it seems if i pull out the engine stuff i could replace the dash and headlight/fog light harness with the one out of the 4-cyl xt. I looked at the fsm and it seems possible but a big pain to do. what do you guys think? any experience with this? also the trip comp is gone from my car so no worries there.

You're looking at a lot of man hours to swap harnesses just for that. I'm doing the same thing to my 87.5 XT GL10 but I just grabbed the necessary hard parts and will run my own wiring. Ever pull a dash out of an XT? I have twice, and it's not worth doing to add something 'fun' IMO. Hell, it's barely worth doing to keep your heat and AC. lol

You never said what you're doing or what car you want to do it too. "It's just headlights and fog lights and power steering"....The way you said that, that's all that's left on the parts car? And I assume it's an xt but it should be clear and what year?

 

But body side wiring harness swaps are generally avoided buy yes they can be and are done if you really want to

Mines a 89 xt6. Mines got a lot of bad wiring and some of the POe's have messed with it too. Honestly I just want head lights to work again so in probably just rewire it and fix the harness were it needs it, seems like it may no be worth trying to make 1 good harness out of 2.