Wiring (or re-wiring) my adventure

[flaflier]

It started innocuously enough, driving to a local car show, the charge light right above the key came on. My wife and I continued, as my thinking was, we are only 5 miles from the house, the car has very little draw, so what's the problem? Well we made it, hung for a little while, and the car started right up and we went home. My thinking was either the voltage regulator, or the alternator had given up the ghost. I replaced the voltage regulator, and when I pulled the alternator to take it and have it checked, the terminal end fell off.. Well, I had it checked, it's fine, so I figured the problem was the terminal end. This is where my adventure starts..
I strip back the electrical tape so I can put on new ends, and the wires seem to be a little burned up. So I continue opening up the tape, and what do I find?



It appears there was a little issue in the previous life, and someone taped over that issue. It appears when it had the issue, several of the wires had melted the insulation off, so someone put black tape over the wires, and re-bundled them. I ended up opening the harness back almost to the firewall before I found solid wire, and then soldered new wires in.



So I get the front harness all back in shape, and think "now I got this".. well the electric fuel pump had been fed from the front harness where the ballast resistor goes, so I disconnect it, check the wiring diagram (oh, and the front harness matches a 6XX chassis, not a 1XX chassis) and find that the fuel pump should be powered from the rear harness. I think "cool, this should be easy", and open the trunk and find the blue wire... well, it's dead. I think "ok, let's trace it out", and make it to the front-rear harness connector...

If you look very closely in the top left corner, you will see a disconnected blue wire.. and lot's more issues!!! A few more pics of those issues:



So, I decide I have seen enough, take a few more pics, and proceed to remove the dash and the dash harness:


First order of business is to recover the dash, because as I investigate, I find that the under-hood fire I knew was there was also under the dash, wanna see how I knew?


So I strip the vinyl off of the dash


Once it's bare, I add a new layer of fiberglass resin to the backside for strength, and then recover in vinyl. Then my wife asks me, "why didn't you do it in leather"?.. so, I strip the new vinyl off, get the leather from ebay, and proceed to recover.

Everything is going fine until I am putting in a switch with that damn slotted-round front nut, and I decide to tighten in up just a bit with a screwdriver...slip...and now I have a deep scratch in the leather....so... I proceed to once again strip the dash, and luckily I have enough leather to recover it... but before I do, I cover an extra switch hole, and realign another so everything is symmetrical..


With the dash being covered, it's on to the dash harness. I decided I didn't like the fact that the main harness wasn't supported, so I made some supports, and then cleaned up all of the wiring, relabeling everything.


I added 2 new gauges while I was at it, as the sensors for the old ones didn't look so good.



Now with everything redone, and relabeled (thank you Bob for a GREAT wiring diagram) I am able to put the dash back in. I did remove the heater, as in FLA, we don't really need additional heat...
I will take some new pictures this weekend and continue this, as it's getting close, but it ain't done!