Over the past month or so, I've been slowly removing my dash.  Brian came down and helped me lift it out about a week ago.  Today, Scott came over and we started replacing the main harness in the truck.  This job sucks.  On one harness, you have

Engine components

Both fuse boxes

ABS Sensors

Entire dash/instrument cluster

Heated seats

SRS

ECU

BCU

Power windows/speakers/door locks

and I'm sure there's more.

From what Scott says, it's even worse on an RRC.  Anyway, we made good progress but I feel that we have a long day yet before it will all be back together again.  Now I'm off to get a heating pad to cure the sore back I have from lying upside down under the dash in 25 degree weather.  :)  I'm complaining, but I'm happy on the inside.  It sure was nice to start making some progress on this.

 Picture 1:  Inside portion of the main wiring harness.  It also extends under both seats and into the rear doors.  This is a *before* shot

Picture 2:  Scott disconnecting wires from the back of the center console

Picture 3:  Looks worse than it is.  Dash and both seats removed along with  2 wiring harnesses in the truck at the same time.  We are cutting out 1 section of the old wiring harness as we lay in the new one in it's place.

Current status:  Laid in the center console, ran the driver side engine bay harness through the firewall, and replaced everything on the drivers side kick panel/steering column.

Next:  Passenger side engine harness through the firewall and replacing the passenger side ECU connectors.  Then put the dash back together before starting in on the engine bay.

We made some GREAT progress today/evening. The entire MAIN wiring harness in my DII has now been fully replaced **and** the truck starts. One more good solid work session and it should be all back together and ready for some testing.

A few things came out of the truck completely worn out and a couple of things broke/bent/snapped/disintegrated as they were removed.  I need to get a hold of a bunch of used parts before I can start buttoning everything back up again but I'm dang happy to have it to the point where it starts and runs on it's own.

A sincere thank you to Scott for driving over here and helping me on this.

On Saturday I replaced the coolant tubes on the heater as the originals were damaged when the heater was pulled.  Once that was done, the heater/AC unit was fitted to the bulkhead, coolant hoses attached, and AC hoses were attached.  The AC hoses were slightly annoying as the bolts are hidden behind the back of the engine, near the coil pack and I have big hands.  Everything went pretty well, though I'm worred about one connection on the new hose leaking coolant.  We'll see.

Blower, wiring, and almost the finished the fascia.

I spent a couple of hours this evening first installing the blower and neatly routing/fastening all of the harnesses to the firewall and fascia frame.  Brian came over about 30 minutes later and helped me lift the fascia (dash) onto the fascia frame and get it secured.  Once he left, I started hooking up wires to all the various instruments on the dash.. and quickly realized that I needed to pull the fascia back out a bit to properly route some of the wires.

Right now the fascia is kind of hanging on the frame as I route wires behind it, up the a-pillars, etc.  I was tempted to just "make it work" but that's the kind of thing that would bug me forever.  So, I pulled it and am doing it right.  I need to buy a replacement external HAM radio speaker wire tomorrow and I hope to get the rest of the interior put back together tomorrow.  Slow and steady wins the race.

Thanks for coming down again Brian.

Glad to help. I'm not surprised the dash had to come part way out again to run wires. Even with all your planning, if you had only put it in once, and it worked, I'd be shocked. My Dad always said, the first two times are just for practice...

Hope to see you driving it soon!

Brian