Dashboard Wiring – 5 Hours

Don’t you just wish you had listened back then in college! It’s a little over 30 years since I attended electrical classes and the grey matter was tired then, or maybe just hung over. Anyway completed the dashboard wiring and installed the dash back in the car.

Decided to stick with the Ron Francis dash wiring loom although did use a terminal block to simplify the wiring for the gauges, horn, and dashboard turn and main beam lights.

Tried to stick with 3 main cable runs, the upper cable run consists of the gauge feed and illumination pigtails, the cable run below the 2 lower gauges is for the horn, turn and main beam dash lights, this left room for the dash harness to run at the bottom of the dashboard.

The light grey cables running off to the right are permanent gauge calibration and setting feed wires which are terminated at a panel which can better be seen at the bottom of the installed dash board picture. This panel will be mounted to the right of the fuse panel to allow easy access to re-set the trip, clock and calibrate the speed and fuel gauges.

Once the dash was mounted back in the car, the fan and ignition were connected back up, as were all the gauge sender units. So far everything remains plug and play for easy installation and removal of the dash.

It’s the small stuff that takes the time – 10 Hours

Having spent most of the weekend in the garage, it’s not until you add up all that was achieved that you realize were the time goes.

With the panels back from the powder coater the dash filler was permanently installed, along with the fuse panel support and the passenger foot box filler pieces.

Switching to wiring, the dash harness ground was drilled the powder coating removed before installing the lug and coating the assembly with dielectric grease, both to maximize the grounding conductivity but more importantly inhibiting rust.

The inertia switch was mounted to the left of the filler panel; beading was run around the dash filler to stop cable fraying.

Clutch neutral wires were extended to reach the neutral switch at the rear of the transmission; the speed sensor plug was also spliced into the wiring loom. The brake switch connection was also made.

Moving to the engine bay the O2 sensor connector was mounted to the chassis, the positive battery cable was run to the disconnect switch. The one wire alternator cable was also run to the same side of the disconnect switch via a mega fuse.

FAST EFI manual instructs running the positive and negative cables directly to the battery, thus terminal connections were made and the two wires installed in cable loom.

You may have noticed that all the wiring is specific to first engine start, over the next few days all engine wire will be completed (coil, starter), along with dash gauges, and ignition switch. Current plan is to at least crank the engine at Thanks Giving, with first engine start set for December 23rd, one year since the kit first arrived!