What darkness lurks under the Dash!

[Tug-n-pull]

Help! Name this busted part...

Well knowing that winter is on the rise I felt it time to do all I could to make the ol 79 CJ7 as warm as posible now. Bolted down the funky top that I love so much. Adjusted all the doors windows and hatches. Am building an above the windshield shelf to mount my CB and some other items over head. Now I am pulling the dash loose to replace all the gauges and lights and switches and such that live in that dark place. The wireing looks like a rats nest and there are many that lead to a dead end. I ran me a hot jumper wire from the battery tonight to find out what all just does not have power going to it. Answer a bunch of stuff. Going to make some changes to the factory set up for much of the under dash mess. Any idea where I might find a good wireing color code chart for this effort on line? Any words of wisdom from thoes that have entered this dark world? Wish me luck and say a little prayer if you will. Any help will be great and I thank you in advance for it. tug

 

[chinard]

oh gawd!

I did that last year with nothing but a haynes manual and a million people telling me to buy a new harness... (bah, humbug!! too friggin expensive)

Anyways, The first thing i would recommend is to get yourself a BIG bottle of that "orange clean" stuff to get rid of all the shit covering the wires. At least you can see the color codes. Its actually not that complicated in there. Most of it was still inside the plastic snake wraps, so it was okay.

I don't know how handy you are with wiring, but be prepared to re-terminate and re-crimp anything that looks even slightly corroded.

If you are after getting the dash lights working again, keep your eye out for the ORANGE wire. Its the "hot" wire thats hooked to just about everything.
You see, alot of the wiring is similar to a set of X-mas lights, where when one lightbulb goes, the entire chain dies.... Same applies here.

The BIGGEST problem i found was with those old antique knobs that like to fall apart like for the headlight and fan controls. I would eventually like to replace these with more solid state parts, but i was just too lazy... I just cleaned em out real good and make sure i bent all the contacts back into place.

As far as making the jeepy-jeep warm again, and you're taking the dash off anyways, do the blazer motor swap. It uses alot more juice than the stock blower, but it makes it plenty warm enough in there.