One Step Forward and Two Back

I'm in a difficult stage with the Mustang.........electrical problems, which are the kind I hate.  I figured that with the steering wheel in it was time to test the under-dash and lighting electrical systems before going any further with interior work.  I hooked up a small battery from our wood chipper to the main power circuit of the non-engine components and got most of the lights and signals working, but some lights were dim and the horns were feeble.  Thinking the battery was not putting out enough amperage, I hooked up jumper cables to our van and almost melted some wires before I quickly disconnected the battery.  I definitely had a short somewhere and had to find it. 

Big Mike came to my rescue.  Turns out that besides being a hell of a mechanic and metal fabricator, he is also an electrician.  We checked out all the easy options by disconnecting systems one at a time and measuring resistance in the main power feed.  After all the easy ones didn't solve the problem, I started taking apart the instrument cluster, dash switches, and finally the under dash wiring that I had worked so hard to put in.  After a full afternoon of deconstruction we finally found the source of the short.  It was basically due to using a 65 wiring harness with a 66 instrument cluster.  I had already had problems with this mismatch and wrote about it in this blog: http://thegoodroads.blogspot.com/2013/04/ammeter-to-voltmeter-conversion.html.  Back then, I decided to connect the two wires together that were for the 65 ammeter, and those, for some reason, were the cause of the short.  This picture from another car shows them connected and routed through the 65 ammeter sensor as they were intended. 

They had to be left disconnected.  By the time we found this, the dash looked like this:

So now I am in the recovery mode and slowly putting everything back together and testing each component.  Some things are still not working, but at least I don't have a short and can trace power and ground connections. 

Meanwhile there has been some parallel progress.  Brian bought a couple of wheels that he liked and he brought them down to verify that they would clear the brake calipers.  They do, and they looked pretty cool:

 

The old lug nuts don't work with the new wheels and will have to be replaced. 

Next are some more wheels with tires mounted so I can move the Mustang out of the shop when I need it for work on my own vehicles. 

On an earlier trip, Brian had brought down the metal bulkhead that replaces the cardboard one between the rear seat and the trunk.  This is an important safety modification.  Because the top of the gas tank doubles as the bottom of the trunk, a rupture of the tank from a rear end collision that results in a fire, would have the fire basically in the passenger compartment immediately.  I remember when Ford got sued over this on the Pinto back in the 80's.  I had painted this bulkhead and then Brian put it in.  Even Colin pitched in on the job:

 

Most of the time was actually spent working on finding a solution to the hacked-up hole in the dash where the radio goes.  I think we came up with a good solution, but I'm being delayed in installing the radio until I get the rest of the electrical system working properly.