A while ago we discovered that the
headlights on the truck had stopped working. And by discovered, I
mean, we left somewhere at dusk and the dark was a whole lot darker
then it should have been. So we did what we always do, we poked
around the truck until we found what was wrong.
In short, everything.
The previous owner was a young teenage
boy. He had, in his infinite wisdom, redone some of the wiring so
that he could put in a killer sound system. Did I say some of the
wiring? I meant all of it. Let me put it this way, the instrument
panel lights were LEDs zip tied to the dash and wired into who knows
what, only one thing of the three things that runs to the ground was
plugged in, and every time the parking break was set the oil gauge
went to zero.
After much mucking about with switches
and wires, we came to a conclusion. We were going to have replace the
entire dash. Which was going to cost us a lot of money.
But we were in luck. While complaining
about our miserable luck to my family, it turns out my uncle has an
older truck of near the same make sitting a fucking field somewhere
that we were welcome to come rob for parts. Presumably because he
loves me. Or maybe he just wanted to see the looks on our faces as we
struggled to remove a dash from a car that was filled with dead mice
and pine needles.
Either way.
The next day, full of optimism and
hope, we loaded up out tools and a camera and drove over to his
house. We found the truck sitting in a grassy patch along with about,
oh four other vehicles. It was old, rusted and blue and very intent
on keeping all it's parts in it thank you very much. So the three of
us stayed and fought the dash out of truck. We pulled out all the
instruments and components that our truck was lacking. As we were
putting our hard won prize in the car my uncle asked if we wanted the
wring harness too.
For those of you that don't know, the
wiring harness is like the wiring in the walls of your house. It's
the bunch of wires and plugs that everything on the dash that you
need to work plugs into. So the lamps and TV's and junk in your house
is like the dash, and the walls wiring is like the wiring harness.
It's pretty much just as difficult to
remove.
So we said no we don't need that, got
home and discovered that yes, we did need that.
Let me put it this way. It took us an
hour to remove the dash. It took us so long to remove the wiring
harness my aunt made us all dinner. Imagine trying to get a bundle of
wires out of a big jagged metal tube. Also imagine that the wires are
running through and hooking to all sorts of things within the tube.
And that the tube is mounted under a table. And you can't cut any of
the wires. And you can't see what you are doing. And you have to take
a picture of every motherfucking step because if you will not
remember the wire orders or what went to what and you will be super
fucked. Not even regular fucked. We also labeled every wire too.
Taking a wiring harness out of a
vehicle is like trying to take an octopus of a close sided cheese
grater with out cutting the octopus.
Of course we still have to get the
wiring harness out of our truck, before we can even think about
putting the new one in, reassemble the dash, and pray. Oh, and all
this has to get done before the it needs to be inspected.
Sweet fucking Jesus.
Pray for us.
Pray for us all.
