Dateline - March 30-31, 2013 - Worked more on wiring this weekend. First, I wanted to check out the wires that run to the trunk for the old fuel pumps, which I'm going to use for the fuel shutoff valves. I found the wires intact, but I did find a short in the right hand wire where it had rubbed against the rear finder well. I'm surprised this never blew a fuse when the fuel supply switch was set to that tank. That tank was out of commission (leaking) for a long time, so it just may never have happened, but I'm glad I found it!
Next, I wanted to install the oil pressure switch that I ordered so that I can turn on/off the starter switch light. Turns out there was already one installed on the car! Should have checked that, but it makes total sense because there is a low oil pressure light on the original! So, that was easy!
I then decided to formalize the relay area in the dash more by taking out the relay frame I made and painting it. This required that I pull all he relays out. While there I also did some cleanup by shortening some of the wires from the aftermarket headlight kit.
Next I started working on cleaning up the main wiring loom to the fuses. As I mentioned before, I need to move the original fuse boxes from in the middle of the dash, behind the gauges, to the right had side of the dash behind what will be the new glove box will be. I also wanted to upgrade to the new type of fuses while I was at it. This is a pretty easy job because the wires going to the original fuse boxes were held in with standard female spade connectors. All I had to do was mark each wire, pull the fuse boxes out, make new wires with the male spade connector and run the wire to the new location. I did that last spring and was holding everything together with nylon zip ties until I got all the wiring sorted. Well, now that the wiring is pretty much done, I wanted to start cleaning up. So I pulled the wires from each side of the of the fuse boxes and laced them up nice and neat. This took a lot of time because I wasn't careful about how I ran the wires to begin with (lesson learned!) so I had to pull wires rearrange them and then lace them up. Once I was done, I had four nice tight bundles of wire instead of one big honking one!
After doing all the lacing, I realized that the wires, were all too long! Unfortunately, I didn't have any more spade connectors, so I pretty much left them until Sunday when I was able to get more at the store.
The rest of Saturday evening was spent cleaning up the wire harness that runs along the right side rocker panel. I added a few wires including +12 volt hot to the trunk, and all of these needed to be taped together and run through a couple of sections of the body (that's when I discovered the shorted wire!)
Saturday night I worked on covering the bottom glovebox in 3M carbon fiber vinyl. Looks pretty good!
Sunday I went to the local hardware store and got a bunch'o connectors and started pretty much finished up the wiring to the fuse boxes. I had some concerns after working on all the wiring that I may have some miss-connected, so I took a lot of time with an ohm meter and the wire diagram to make sure I had things right. I found out that I actually did have a couple wrong, and one main source was missing to the headlights. I got that all cleaned up now. I have to get a few multi-connector adapters at the local auto parts store and then I'm pretty much done. I'm very happy with the wiring and how it turned out. Much cleaner then I was hoping for.
So, just to add some balance to my life, I didn't work on the car all weekend! I did mow the lawn for the first time this year! I always try to wait for Easter weekend to mow for the first time. I will be mowing it every week from now until August when it drys out and pretty much stops growing, so I like to delay it as long as possible! If you can't tell, I don't like mowing the lawn!
So, still moving and making small steps. I'm waiting for some connectors to come in the mail and I have some more circuit board work to do before I can finish the power/start switches. I will work on that this week until I head to Forks to go fly fishing on the Hoh River!
