Long day today, probably worked 8 hours. Some little things take A LOT of time. Pulled the bumper inserts, cleaned them up, filled the holes with Bondo. Sanded it down, primed and repainted. Took a couple of tries to get it "good enough". But it's much, much better than the roughly ground holes in the trim I had this morning. Reinstalled bumper, routed harness behind and plugged in PDC sensors, rear fog and corner markers. Hopefully the bumper is on there for good now. Pulled the dash pad and frame back out, so I could reinstall the HVAC heater ducting on the front of the unit. Then put the dash frame and pad back in. Fitted the driver side parcel shelf. Took a lot of measuring, drilling and cutting. But fit fine the first try. The extra holes are left over from other projects. They, and the gaps in the back, will be covered when I'm done. Test fit the kill switch some more. Confirmed that it will fit there, but only in one orientation, and required some trimming of the switch. With the front edge trimmed (to butt against the hard dash frame) and with the bosses trimmed off (so it will bolt flat against the bottom of the plastic dash frame) it's just tall enough to flush mount in the dash pad. Installed the right hood latch, and hung the radiator frame on the car to get it out of the way. Spent a while fiddling with the rear convertible hoop some more. Still needs a bit more fine tuning. Wet sanded and polished the Chili Red mirror caps, found a pair a good mirrors in my pile, cleaned them up, installed the caps, and installed the mirrors on the car. GPness...
Nothing exciting to look at today. About 5 hours, installing latches / handles windows in the doors, installing speakers, installing battery and battery fuse box, and fixing several spots where I buggered the paint on the cage. Tomorrow, plan to work more on the dash, shelves and kill switch. Will tape up the cage to avoid more paint damage.
Looking great Paul, looks like the switch is a little snug with your cage there, but still looks like it belongs.
OK... that took all damn day.... Ran the new battery cable. Instead of going up the front left wheel well, I went through this hole just forward of my front cage plate. Enlarged the hole a little and used a factory grommet from an old harness. Yeah, I need to add some undercoating where the cage plates were welded in. Cut about 2' off this really expensive new battery cable. Wired the switch per the instructions. Required a couple of trips to the hardware store and one trip to the auto parts store, for connectors, 12g wire, mounting hardware, and some additional 2g battery cable. This switch does three things: cuts the main line from the battery, kills the main ignition line (the "run" signal that powers fuse 34), and shorts the alternator through a large resistor to ground, to prevent a damaging voltage spike when the battery connection is cut. That's why it has so many wires and terminals. Installed the switch in the dash frame. It's tight in there, but it works. Used insulating boots on the terminals to ensure no shorts. I'm also going to add a rubber sheet between the switch terminals and the metal dash structure, just to be extra careful. Had to cut some stuff off the back of the (now nonfunctional) vent, and grind out the dash frame to allow it to rotate 90 degrees, to increase clearance behind it for the wiring. But will look good when done. Switch in the "on" position... And the "off" position... Routed the new battery cable from the switch, through the firewall wiring harness grommet. Just need to re-seal it. Took me a while, but I finally found the right wiring diagrams and confirmed that the green ignition wire is the one I need to interrupt. Done.
Cabrio has extra fat side sills, there's barely room to squeeze the existing cable bundle under the trim. Not enough space to add the main battery cable.
Spent a couple of hours finishing up the dash. Used the sacrificial dash pad to figure out how to minimize material removal this time. Measure 42 times, and cut once (hopefully)... Really only needed a single 1.75" hole bored in each side, at a very precise spot. I intentionally made it a bit on the tight side, easier to remove material if needed, than add it back. The trick is, getting the fatter parts forward of the cage past the cage A-pillars. I don't know how others have done this, but I tested doing "origami" on the sacrificial pad, and it works. So I did that again. First, remove the extra duct layer on the bottom of the dash pad. I used a Dremel tool with cutoff wheel. Then, VERY CAREFULLY score the plastic dash pad layer, about 3/4 of the way through the plastic. DO THIS VERY CAREFULLY because it's easy to plunge too deep... then you've penetrated the vinyl dash cover on the other side, and ruined the pad. I was careful and didn't mess up on either pad. Start at the deepest part of the hole, and angle toward the middle of the pad as you go to the front edge. You want a fairly straight cut. May take a bit of trial and error to get deep enough. Once you do, you can fold the new "wing" you've made upward (as the pad faces up). It may snap the remaining plastic, but the vinyl will remain intact. I also needed to remove more of the black duct plastic behind the side window defogger vent, and open up the vent hole for my kill switch. Then, time to install. It was VERY tight this time, very hard to get everything lined up, get the centering pin in place, and getting the pad to slide/snap down into position... but finally did. I could have drilled the holes a few mm inward and it would have been a little easier. But now that it's in, it's good that it's tight. Once in place, fold the wings back down and install the modified A-pillar trim. Done. The wrinkles in the dash pad should flatten out once the pad has warmed up in the sun a few times. Decided to go ahead and make the dash a little prettier... It's starting to look like something! Motivates me to keep working.
Thanks for explaining the battery cable. I was able to fit the top dash part by carefully bending it in the hot sun. The under dash skin I had to cut like you did. Adds to that professional look.
Be careful what you wish for. Bruce did that for a year. Now she's Kaitlyn. Paul cuts more than fingers with those saws....
Had hoped to get the interior mostly finished up today. Instead, the steering column was a 2 hour job instead of a 15 minute job. Determined that Blimey's column was buggered, after getting it mostly installed. So had to swap the key cylinder and steering angle sensor to the GP column and install it, and still had to fight it a bit. Ultimately better, because (a) Blimey's column was for an automatic and (b) the GP column has half the mileage and (b) it's another GP part the I can use. Anyway, that ate my afternoon. I'll play more tomorrow, maybe.