Welcome To My Electrical Nightmare! - 10/02/2004

It was time to tackle the electrical issues in the dash. But first, to get some answers to why the door doesn't work from the inside.



Remove door panel,



open door.



Interesting, handle and rod have separated.



Handle removed from the door (no rivets like a certain F-body...). Little black clip next to it. Not sure how it goes back together as the body manual just deals in generalities, but we'll work something out.



Handle fixed. Little black clip slung over door and hooked on spring. Really not sure if it is correct or not, but it works quite well.



New bulbs and harness all repaired.



OMG IT WORKS!



Let's remove this and see why the button doesn't work.



Here we are. Broken spring. Not sure where to get a new one, so a salvage yard hopping we go!



The notch is where the spring goes.



Spring in place (albeit broken).

Since there is nothing more we can do today, proceed on to the stereo!



Harness spliced in to factory dash wires (which have been cut of course).



Power it up and it works! Or at least it detects an FM stereo channel.



Speaker wires installed.



Non-original speaker wires spliced in. I ran the radio at this point and it sounded GREAT for a 1978 vintage 8 track deck. Quite a quality sound from the speakers in the back (even better than the Lemans with it's $400 stereo deck).



Wires routed through dash.



Lisa has small enough hands to get the last two screws in place.

After all that effort, it has an intermittent short and doesn't work! How annoying! So I am going to replace the crappy aftermarket broken speakers, re-run some quality speaker wire, and buy a new GM style harness and solder everything together to eliminate any potential shorts. Stupid crappy wiring. But at least I have interior lights (including a light for my ashtray) and I can open the door from the inside now.

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Last updated October 2nd, 2004