I just finished removing the instrument panel and the dash and I found some melted wires and signs that the wiper switch has had an electrical short at one time or another. That tells me why the wipers didn't work when I bought the car. Would it be a recommended thing to do to replace the wireing harness completely at this point? Or should I try to run new wire from the connections to the fuse panel at let it go at that?

In my opinion anytime you see melted wires under the dash you need to be VERY CAREFUL. Where there is damage that you can see there is probably more that you can't. This stuff is approaching 30 years old (assuming you have a 76). Yes, a new dash harness is very expensive-but weigh that against what the car is worth and a new harness is good insurance. No question in my mind, replace the whole thing. At Bloomington in 2000 someone was parting a 69 coupe that had a fire; it had a sticker from the insurance company that said the claim was dated Dec 24th. That was a bad Christmas for someone. I don't know if wiring was the culprit, but fire is never a good thing.

I agree, since you spent all that time removing the dash, you might as well do the job right. if you don't, it will be a lot harder to fix the next wiring problem. joe

Thanks for the replys everyone. I am going to look for a new wireing harness for at leas under dash. No need to take a chance. I just wanted to confirm that I wasn't over reacting. I tend to do that sometimes. Next question, anyone no an affordable place to get the wireing I need? LOL

I'll just roll my question in here as well. I also found some melted wires in my dash harness and decided to replace it. My car is a 77 L82, the junkyard here has a 78 and they only want 35 for the harness. Bonus the dash is already out, so it's easy for me to get as well. Anyway, the 78 doesn't have pop up headlights like mine does, will it still work??

|UPDATED|8/16/2003 10:49:44 PM|/UPDATED|

I don't have an electrical degree but, every place I have checked on harnesses has only asked me for what year and if I have A/C or not. They list a harness for under the dash all, and for the engine all. So, I am assuming that the "all" would include all available options for that vehicle that year. I would think you would be ok by getting the one you are looking at providing that it doesn't have any damage to it as well.

The pop-up part of the headlights is controlled by the headlight switch so that won't matter. If you use a different year harness, the electrical plugs at the fuse box (where it goes through the firewall) are probably not in the same place. If you have a good wiring diagram for each year you can probably figure out which wires to swap.

Were you able to get the driver's dash panel out without cutting wires, etc? I tried to do that with me '75 over the weekend. I had removed the dash pad screws, had the center console out, had loosened the steering column bolts at the firewall, and removed the steering column bolts at the dash to drop it. But it hung up on something. I could move it around, but not pull it out.

Any hints or ideas wold be helpful. I want to clean the speedometer cable and fix the trip odometer if I can.

Thanks,
Kenn