Today I sprayed the burnt area of the inside of the firewall with Purple Power. Then, I pulled all the body plugs and hosed out the interior. Its still blackened, but it cleaned up pretty good, and the best part was the smell is mostly gone. The wire channels down both sides of the body had a lot of dirt in them from all the years of off-roading. It felt weird hosing out the interior, but it was effective. Tomorrow I am planning on priming and painting.
Pulled the donor steering column and brake booster, and about half the dash today. It was more difficult than I thought. I had to spray PB Blaster on everything. I cut the inner driver side fender to gain easy access to the steering shaft, and it would not come lose from the column. I ended up cutting the shaft in half with a reciprocating saw and then it would not clear the hole in the firewall. Beat the shaft end off through the fire wall hole and removed column. Cut off the auto shifter parts off the bottom of the column and punched the pin out of the shift lever to remove that. Brake booster came out fairly easy with the steering column out of the way.
Before I put the dash completely back together, I need to come up with a cover for the automatic trans gear position indicator on the instrument cluster. I had black tape over the old dash because I kept looking at it instead of the indicator on the center console shifter. The tape got sticky and dust was stuck to it.
I also came up with a plan; I am going to replace all the burnt parts and get it running. Throw a seat in it to take it for a test drive. Park it and run all the accessory wiring while most of the interior, and the bottom portion of the dash below the steering column is removed. It will make access much easier. Over the past 20 or so years, I have slowly added a bunch of stuff, all requiring a bunch of wiring. I cleaned up a lot of it when I rewired most of the accessories a few years ago, but it was still very cluttered looking under the dash. I am planning on leaving the dash stock, and I will modify the center console to mount nearly all of the accessories there. I need to mount switches in the center console for:
Roof lights, LED bar on bumper (removing one of them for better air flow and it never gets used), rock lights, front locker, air compressor, and a small pusher fan for the trans cooler.
Also need to mount an air compressor pressure gauge, CB, ham radio and two voltage gauges, and wire in my supplemental brake system for towing. CB is a Cobra I was gifted from a old friend a few years ago with the controls in the microphone so I won't need space for a big box. Need wiring for all of these, and for the power seats (manual wiring harness from donor doesn't have power seat connectors), and the torque converter lockout switch (I bought a new shifter handle with a button built in) to run in one loom to the center console from the relays and fuse panel I have where the cruise control module used to be located. It will be nice and neat, and completely separate from the factory wiring.
So far, the only modifications to the factory wiring I plan on making are when I install the new stereo and alarm.
