I've taken a few important steps with the project over the past couple of months.  I finally sent off all my instrument cluster and dash plastic pieces to Performance Car Graphics in Tallahassee, FL for the works... complete restoration.  Not taking any chances on holding them up with any unusable parts, I sent them 3 complete clusters along with almost 3 sets of dash plastic pieces.  The arrangement is for them to use the best of what I sent them for the job and let me know how much credit I can get for all the extra parts if they just keep them.  I'm hoping to get the work done for a good bit less using the credit... we'll see.  Regardless, They gave me an approximate turnaround of 5-6 months.  That would have it all back to me around April.  I WILL have the dash ready then.

To make sure that would happen, I pulled out the 3 underdash wiring harnesses I had stashed looking to come up with a good one.  The original harness was ok in the wire department as no wires looked to be cut or damaged but looking closer, the bulkhead connector was toast.  A VERY hot connector had fried the plug and the surrounding connections.  A second harness had multiple cuts in the wiring but a pretty decent bulkhead connector.  The 3rd harness was really nice.  In fact, looking over it quickly revealed no problems at all aside from a flasher that had fused with its plug and a missing dash light socket.  This would be the base for my "perfect" harness.

I've cleaned many wiring harnesses and nothing works better than some good 409-type household cleaner and a toothbrush.  Starting at one end, doing a 6 inch section at a time, will net you a "like new" harness, and, with expose any cuts or breaks that you might not have seen.  This was the case here.  There was an area of wrapped wiring that looked like it got stabbed with something.  I undid the wrap just at this area and low and behold, 3 or 4 wires had their casing torn and the wire strands exposed.  No wires were severed completely but I wasn't going to just leave it like that.  I used lengths of the same wire from the same areas from one of the other harnesses to repair the damaged wires.  All joints were solders and covered with heat shrink tubing.  The outer black plastic tape was replaced with this fancy electrical tape looking stuff the welds itself to itself as you wrap/stretch it in place.  The final result looks just like the vinyl wrap the factory used.  You can get the stuff from Eastwood but I found it at the hardware store for like half as much.  I ended up with 2 bad areas that I had to repair the wires and re-cover.  I replaced the missing dash light socket along with the flasher connector from my donor harnesses.  Afterwards the complete harness couldn't have looked any better.  I blackened the little snap clips on the bulkhead connector leaving only the gasket to the firewall left to replicate.

While digging around for the harnesses I had the wiper regulator arms in my hands so I thought I'd get them cleaned up.  No rocket science here, just bead blast, lube and reassemble.  Knowing that the splined sections that stick out from the cowling to retain the wiper could be seen, I did take the time to re-plate them.  While these arms came did off the car, the crank (part that mounts directly to the wiper motor) was not the right one.  Stamped clearly on the part were the words "2 speed" and a part number.  I looked the number up and sure as heck, it was wrong for my application.  Just another piece added to the list for my next visit to my parts guy.