Re: 1968 Plymouth GTX
Posted: Fri Jul 20, 2018 7:05 pm
I reinstalled the fenders and aligned them with shims to the cowl surface and doors. My goal is to know what shims are needed and where so that on reassembly I am not putting freshly painted parts on and off the car repeatedly.
Removed the steering column by unbolting this plate:
Then removing these nuts and washers (not sure what that ground wire was hooked to):
Removed the dash which has a bolt on each side it slides over as seen here, plus smaller bolts across the top along where the windshield runs.
The whole dash assembly will then tip forward for easy access to the wiring connections:
This gave me access to the heater box which is held in place by the brace attaching to the body and 3 bolts that extend into the engine compartment area:
Removing the box gave me access to the firewall insulation.
The thing that always amazes me about these older cars is how often the wiring is messed with. The picture above shows the back of the gauge assembly and you will see there are no wires attached to the panel light switch. Instead they had a homemade jumper wire connecting the leads together. Did the same thing with the ballast wires:
Found numerous places where wires in the harness are cut and just left uncovered:
This connector only had 1 strand of wire left holding it together:
Removed the steering column by unbolting this plate:
Then removing these nuts and washers (not sure what that ground wire was hooked to):
Removed the dash which has a bolt on each side it slides over as seen here, plus smaller bolts across the top along where the windshield runs.
The whole dash assembly will then tip forward for easy access to the wiring connections:
This gave me access to the heater box which is held in place by the brace attaching to the body and 3 bolts that extend into the engine compartment area:
Removing the box gave me access to the firewall insulation.
The thing that always amazes me about these older cars is how often the wiring is messed with. The picture above shows the back of the gauge assembly and you will see there are no wires attached to the panel light switch. Instead they had a homemade jumper wire connecting the leads together. Did the same thing with the ballast wires:
Found numerous places where wires in the harness are cut and just left uncovered:
This connector only had 1 strand of wire left holding it together: