Good news! The dashboard is officially out of the truck. I had to disconnect one final wiring harness at the steering column, push the bulkhead connectors through the firewall (not without ruining two of the small rubber grommets, which were hard as rock), chase down, label and disconnect several more random wires, including several going from the brake controller to the master cylinder. Once I had sorted those out, I clipped the two wires leading up to the nonexistent dome lights and pulled the cable going to the PTO through the firewall, and the whole thing came out.
Flush with success (and trying to plan for a rainy forecast on Monday) I hauled it and the dash from the green truck into the basement, set things up on the workbench, and started swapping the wires out. The fuse panel went in easily, and I pulled the main loom over to the gauge cluster to start moving wires over. Things got confusing very quickly until I worked out how the loom was oriented and began moving the gauge leads over; the spaghetti of lighting wires was difficult to sort out until suddenly it all became clear. The two main question marks left are the leads to the aftermarket oil gauge, which takes a smaller lightbulb, and a random gauge light clip hanging off the bottom of the loom that I can’t track down.
The headlight switch took the most time to deal with, because I was having a problem with the button latch on the bottom not releasing the knob. I monkeyed with it for a while, took a short break, and then unscrewed the bezel holding the whole unit to the dash. Pulling the knob all the way out at that point, I pushed the release button and the knob shaft popped out. I scrubbed the outside with electric cleaner and wire-brushed the contacts, then reinstalled the switch and hooked it back up. The ignition switch was a little more nervous-making, as I’d already swapped it out once very early after I’d gotten the truck and suddenly I couldn’t start it. I carefully followed the hookups on the back of the original ignition unit and screwed it back in place, but I have to verify I’ve got the wires in the right place.
The other thing I noticed was that the mechanical linkage from the heater control was slipping off the lever when it was open—it was actually disconnected when I got the truck. I pulled the wire off, bent it to add the right amount of torque to hold it down on the post, and reinstalled it.
With the old loom out, all of the scabbed-in wiring fell away and the whole unit looks a lot cleaner. The big question I’ve got now is how to add a radio in to the wiring; most likely it’ll be on its own fusible link but I have to figure out how it would be keyed to the ignition switch. I cleaned up the backside of the dashboard and got the whole thing ready to reinstall, but I’m waiting on a package of size 57 bayonet LEDs to replace all the filament bulbs before I put the thing back in the dash. Also in the cart is a new choke cable to replace the frozen one I pulled out.
So next up on the list is to clean up the firewall where I’d welded in new metal—wire wheel off the scabby seam sealer I used last year, treat it with rust encapsulator, put clean seam sealer over everything, and hit it with a coat of red paint. I’m waiting on the Scout Connection to see if they’ve got three new bulkhead grommets they can send me, and I have to find some plastic plugs for the holes left from the old A/C system. The last thing I’m going to do order and install some heat matting like I did in the Scout to cut down on temps coming in from the engine bay. When that’s all cleaned up, I can hang the dash back in place and hopefully never have to take it off again.
