Wiring Road Trip…

What do you get when you have the happy coincidence of the following intersecting needs:

• A teenager 4.5 practice driving hours away from his license
• A car that needs a part that can’t be inexpensively purchased
• A free version of that part in a salvage yard 3 hours away
• Christmas vacation

You get a wiring road trip day!

A few months ago as I was installing the gas tank, I noticed the wiring for the gas tank gauge was in pretty bad shape. The wiring routes from the fuel sending unit under the car into the trunk through a rubber grommet and then feeds into the trunk’s wiring harness. In my case, the wiring around the rubber plug was stripped, exposing the metal wire directly to the weather and elements under the car:

At the time, I decided to ignore it and “get back to it later” when I did the wiring. Since I’m now doing the wiring, I’ve been attempting to investigate how to fix this.

The “easy” solution would have just been to buy the complete tail light wiring harness for the (currently on sale) price of $169.49. Since I’ve spent a *lot* of money recently on the Mustang, I was hoping not to have to go that route.

I started looking for just that grommet to see if I could replace just that one piece. I looked everywhere and didn’t find anything close. I know they have to exist but apparently not to us mere mortals. I probably spent 4-5 hours researching this part with nothing to show for it.

My next step was similar to one I’d taken before when looking for my drip rail chrome. I called up R & S Classic Mustang Supply in Albany Oregon and asked if they had it. The answer was “I’m sure I have one somewhere and if you come up and pull it yourself you can have it for free.”

“Free” is not a word often associated with the restoration of classic Mustangs so the very next day (today) I took off with my teenage son in the driver’s seat and my youngest son in the back seat for the three hour drive to Albany. I wanted to get the part before the “free” conversation was forgotten.

When we got there, we were once again welcomed into a parts-lovers heaven. There were parts everywhere in the garage and in the back stood 3-4 rows of parts cars:

I’m partial to the Mustang on the far right front row in the picture above since that’s the one that gave me my drip rail chrome. I started looking for the grommet there and sure enough it had one right where it was supposed to be.

With a little 8-year-old wiggling on the fuel sending unit, the part was ready to be taken off:

It wasn’t in the best of shape, but it had the all-important feature of not having exposed wires.

When I showed the part to my teenager, I got the hilarious response of “We came all the way up here….for THAT?!!”

Yes, Son. Yes, we did. It’s a car-guy thing…

However, being a car guy in a salvage yard it wasn’t long before that one part turned into more. From that same salvage yard Mustang, I also picked up a “new” instrument cluster:

As you can tell, it’s in terrible shape. Thankfully, I didn’t really care what it looked like. I wanted it for two purposes:

1. Disassembly practice in preparation for the upcoming rebuild of my instrument cluster
2. The fuel and temperature gauges

If you remember, my instrument cluster’s fuel and temperature gauges didn’t work when I took the cluster off. It’s very possible that they don’t work because the circuit board behind them is delaminated and broken. However, it’s also possible that the gauges themselves are just bad. In the latter case, I’d have to replace both gauges – at over seventy dollars each.

I rolled the dice on this salvage yard cluster (which included a full set of gauges) for ten bucks. At that price, it was worth it just for the practice alone.

After I got home, I took a 9 volt battery and applied voltage across the terminals of both gauges in the salvage yard instrument cluster. Both of them moved, indicating that they’re probably alive and functional. After a little cleaning of the lenses, both appear to be in visually decent condition as well. I think I scored some very inexpensive replacement parts that I’ll be able to use if I have to.

I also took a closer look at the salvage yard wiring grommet after I got home. As it turns out, the large quantity of dirt and grime hid a couple of small tears in the rubber I hadn’t seen previously. It would have probably been fine, but my grommet was clearly in better shape – with the exception of the stripped wires.

Without a backup grommet, I had previously been reluctant to attempt to fix the stripped wire on the chance I would totally break the part. However, since I now had a suitable backup I decided to give it a go. After about an hour of futzing with it, I was able to finally get the old wire out and run an uninterrupted line through. With a little bit of soldering and heat-shrink I attached the pig-tail for the fuel sending unit and ended up with this nice piece:

In the end, we went “all the way up there, for THAT?!!” …  and didn’t even use it.

I haven’t told my teenager this – I think it’s for the best. He wouldn’t understand.