The great rewire project of 2025 is officially underway. After nearly 11 weeks, the new wiring harness from AAW arrived. While waiting, I pulled all the carpet, fixed a failed vacuum switch for the headlight pods, disassembled and refurbished the dash switches, refinished the nasty seat brackets, had the tach rebuilt and updated to work with the electronic ignition, figured out why the tach was blocked from mounting in the correct orientation rather than clocked by ~ 10 degrees, replaced the center console with one that is much higher quality, and started working out the plan for the incremental work I will tackle as part of this rewiring project.
First, in the unexpected scope creep category, the carpet needs to be replaced. It was poorly cut and some cuts were made in a way that left big gaps which couldn't be filled by repositioning pieces. The quality was also not great. Because original-style loop carpeting is no longer available, a search has been ongoing for something close and cost effective. After much internal debate, I've decided that it's better to buy a kit rather than source carpet and attempt to cut everything to shape myself. This, however, does limit my options. I am still waiting on one lagging carpet sample to arrive before deciding whose kit and which carpet to order. I may also redo the underlayment by strategically applying Dynamat Lite to quell some noise and potentially replace the felt underlayment with a more modern, lightweight material from DEI. The stock fitment doesn't include insulation on top of the transmission tunnel behind the dash, or on the sides of the tunnel next to the seats. I'm not sure why the former is excluded, but the latter is simply due to available space. Thin Dynamat will fit perfectly in both places. Click on a picture below to launch a captioned slide show.
First, in the unexpected scope creep category, the carpet needs to be replaced. It was poorly cut and some cuts were made in a way that left big gaps which couldn't be filled by repositioning pieces. The quality was also not great. Because original-style loop carpeting is no longer available, a search has been ongoing for something close and cost effective. After much internal debate, I've decided that it's better to buy a kit rather than source carpet and attempt to cut everything to shape myself. This, however, does limit my options. I am still waiting on one lagging carpet sample to arrive before deciding whose kit and which carpet to order. I may also redo the underlayment by strategically applying Dynamat Lite to quell some noise and potentially replace the felt underlayment with a more modern, lightweight material from DEI. The stock fitment doesn't include insulation on top of the transmission tunnel behind the dash, or on the sides of the tunnel next to the seats. I'm not sure why the former is excluded, but the latter is simply due to available space. Thin Dynamat will fit perfectly in both places. Click on a picture below to launch a captioned slide show.
The AAW loom is overbuilt. Most of the wires are 12 or 14 gauge, with some as large as 10 and a few as "small" as 16 gauge. Mounting the powerblock as supplied was problematic from an accessibility standpoint. It's big and because the relays remove from the side and they point in opposite directions, finding a location that didn't intrude into the passenger space was a non-starter. To address this, a new mount was designed and printed from PET-CF that points all fuses and relays forward and attaches to the firewall behind the glovebox. I will fabricate a new glovebox dimensioned differently from stock and include a door at the back for access to the fuses and three of the relays. The other six relays will be located immediately below the bottom of the glovebox. Still easily accessible, but out of the way.
Next up is starting the actual rewiring process. That sounds really simple. Yeah, no problem at all...
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