46 Power Wagon Restoration pt. 2

[Desoto61]

Lots of little things. Connected up the steering wheel, then installed the floor plates after a little modification to the driver's side due to the extra shimming under the cab changing the angle slightly.

There is precious little room up front. After installing the two upper support bars to get a closer idea of the right angle I fitted the two electric fans. They're small, and still tight, but will hopefully work well as they basically form a band across the front, and even at that they're very close to the motor in places.

Slowly been working out all the plumbing. The heater hoses route from the bulkhead fittings to the same side of the motor. The AC hoses are a little more tricky. The upper hose is short and fairly simple, the lower hose runs from the condenser back through the dryer to the firewall. I used a hard line from the condenser through the radiator cowl, then to a soft line to the dryer bolted to the splash shield then to the bulkhead fitting. Still have one more line to route but need a few fittings on order for that. Then I'll have to mark and remove all the lines to go get them crimped on before I can connect everything up.

I've been reluctant to start filling any of these systems yet till I'm sure I won't need to take them apart again. Need to start figuring out parts for the exhaust system as the last big piece to get done under the hood.

[Alxj64]

Man, I feel you on packaging stuff in there tight like that. Some experience of mine and efans against the core like that... granted it was in a trail vehicle, I've had the fans come a little loose in the mount and the shaking and motion of the vehicle still managed to weaken a core rib in the radiator and then at moment of heavy throttle on activity, enough pressure allowed a nice long crack to open up in the core rib on the inside tangent of the fan mount. If you can spare the space, it may be worth while to try and insulate the fan against the core a little. It may seem dumb that the plastic can wear into the aluminum but with some abrasive road grime embedded in the plastic, it becomes a nice fine grit file.

Also, when it comes time, I'll be bugging you for some AC line tech and such. Keep it up man. Home stretch... home stretch.

[Desoto61]

Interesting, I'll look into it. My biggest concern with the way I have them mounted is that they connect to each other in the middle so they have some movement there mostly forward and aft. I dislike the plastic push clips so I may look at having a small plate cut to mount them to that runs across the rad. Since they're small I didn't want a full shroud, but a band slightly bigger than the fans may do the trick. Might even still have enough material from the tank to do it.

Sure, I'm out of town over Christmas but will be here after. Been trying to figure out the right flange and clamp for my turbo, but the build plate is missing so I'm not exactly sure what I have. I think it's the standard Cummins 2.75" setup based on measurements and what I've read at 4bt swaps, but the flange at airflow is mild steel I think, and I plan to run a stainless exhaust, so I need to find a source for a stainless version.

It does feel weird putting things together and not planning to take them back apart. Feels good but I've been in mockup mode for so long it's hard to shake the habit!

[Desoto61]

Lots of little tasks and started one big one. Ordered a pair of horns, in one of those rare situations they ended up fitting almost perfectly beside the intercooler and I used the two lower support mounting bolts to hold them in place. It uses some dead space, required no extra fabrication, and fit great. It's like an early Christmas present.

Of course then I tried to start connecting up my AC hoses and it was back to business as usual. A local hydraulic shop crimped the ends on for me properly. I used the aluminum bendable hard lines for the connections to the condenser, the connections were tight, should have shifted the condenser more to the driver's side but managed to get it to work out. The lower return line was fairly simple but the upper condenser input line was tricky. The larger line is harder to bend up properly, and even the short line ends up being a little long. That caused the line to be practically non-existent. Routing it became a real struggle both because of the size and how close it is to the hood. The condenser is bolted in place, just have the final connections to the dryer to make, but I'll save those till it's time to actually evacuate the system.

Started laying out the electrical system. I'm using a Painless truck harness and in typical fashion for me I decided to mount it on the passenger side so I can access it through the glove box. Problem with that is it was meant to mount on the driver's side, which means that some of the wires may be a bit of a stretch at best. Most look to be OK, but the headlight wires aren't going to make it as is. First task is to just start routing the various groupings of wires toward the right sections of the truck.

[Bruce in BC]

horns

What kind of horns are those?
How is the sound?

[Desoto61]

They are made by Hella, part number 003399801, a dual tone horn. Supposed to be very loud, but I haven't heard them get.

[Desoto61]

Nice holiday break, time with friends and family but still found some time to work on the truck too. It's all mostly wiring, which isn't much to look at, and is rather tedious. Doesn't help that I'm not running a gas engine, and plan on installing other modules/features. So I've mainly been working on trying to route wires and just figure out which wires are going where.

I bought a bulkhead connector that I cut an opening for during the cab work, so for now the hole is used to route the wires to the engine. To go to the rear I snaked wires down the A-pillar and out below the cab behind the kick panel. Most of the rest run across the cab toward the driver's side. There's enough extra wire for most of it, but the headlight switch wires aren't long enough, and a few others are close. Some can be lengthened by modifying the harness as some of the wires run back across the cab then back through the openings to the engine, and those I can cut loose and pull that extra loop out. So there's just lots of time trying to determine which wires go where and the best way to route them.

The wire runs in the cab are too small for the wire bundles but they make a great support point so I can hang the wire bundles from them on zip ties. The second step then was to start routing them through these zip ties to get a more final routing, but I leave the zip ties loose so I can still route additional wires and move things if needed.

The kit comes with some zip ties but I have a ton of others that I've been using as temporary tools to help group wires, roll up the excess, or even to just zip tie wires to the item or wire they're supposed to connect to. It involves lots of cutting and reapplying them sometimes but it really helps to keep things organized.

Up front there's a Maxi-fuse for that protects the whole panel and connections for the battery/starter terminal and alternator. I also have a power wire for the Heat/Air system and one for the headlight relay setup. Right now they're kind of bundled up in the corner, but I will need to come up with a cleaner option for these sources once I have all of them figured out as they'll need to tie into the battery feed which will be in the bed.

[Desoto61]

As complete as the Painless harness there are things missing. The newer versions I think have some of these but I'll have to add them, such as the power lock wires. There is a power feed in the harness but the actual wires and relays to operate them are not part of the kit. There are two relays for the heater/AC, as well as the relay block for the high/low beam switch. There will eventually be other modules too, finding spots for them all and how to route the wires to them really has to be part of the process. Biggest problem I have is that I don't yet have all the various parts and modules, so that wiring has to be roughed in for now.

Some of the relays I attached to the center dash support by drilling and tapping some holes. I also cut a piece of leftover aluminum and mounted it on the driver's side as a place to mount other modules like an alarm and the headlight relays.

Grounds are the other big issue. The best option would have been to weld some studs to various locations to use, but I didn't do that before paint, so I have been drilling and tapping all of my grounding studs to get more contact. Star washers help. This includes grounding all the various parts of the truck. I installed some ground straps from the cab, radiator cowl, and engine to the frame. Inside the cab I used some screws drilled and taped though thicker support pieces as common grounding points.

The cruise module has really long wiring harness, and it's mounted so close that I have a ton of extra wire, which I hate. Don't love cutting the harness and re-soldering the wires back together, but I hate having giant loops of excess wire just hanging around too. Wiring is a fight between my desire to make sure everything works and my OCD to keep it clean and organized.

[cj7ox]

Looking good, Desoto! Really enjoying the progress!

[Duane Aldridge]

When I done the wiring on the 4bt 59 Power Giant cut and ran every wire from scratch all wires are proper length and nice tight and looked real nice. If I had started with a pre manufacture harness I guess about half would have been wasted. Fleabag!!

[Desoto61]

True, though some of it is my routing of the wires. But on the other hand the cruise module comes pre-terminated with a bulkhead connector so no option to run your own wire. As for the rest of it, the Painless harness is nice, all color coded and labeled ever foot as to what it does. Plus they lay out all the confusing sections like how to wire up the turn signal switches for single rear lights vice separate rear turn signal lights and such.

Biggest problem with it is that while this is a truck harness they basically just make the car harness but with an extra long rear wiring section, except some of the wires on a truck don't go to the rear, like the power antenna wire, which will probably become a remote turn-on for an amp, but is super long like the rear tail light wires. Not a big deal, but like you said, lots of excess wire. But it's all top quality wire so I can find a use for it!

[deicerman]

fantastic work

this is a build that i want to do when i get a truck !!!!!! still looking

[Desoto61]

In the never-ending stream of parts I seem to need to connect all these other pieces parts. My OCD nature wants it all to be clean and well organized, but that takes a lot of patience and time. I'm going to need a location for some electrical components underhood, since the tank I wanted to use for windshield washers isn't going to fit here I decided to build a plate for those parts. I bent it out of aluminum and used some riv-nuts to bolt it to the firewall, loosely for now till I figure out what all needs to be mounted to it and where.

Otherwise I took a break from wire and switched to exhaust. It will be a 3" stainless setup that will exit in front of the rear tire. It's a tricky run, I want to keep it tucked up tight, but there's not as much room for it on the passenger side as there would be on the driver's side. Just kind of tacking everything in place till I know I'm happy with the final run. I figured I had more room than I really do, so the muffler I bought is a little large. Thankfully the centered rear axle leaves plenty of room for it side-to-side, but length wise it will be close. Then I'll need to figure out how to hang it all off the frame.

[Alxj64]

When you go to fully weld that stuff, if you want to borrow my back purge regulator you certainly may. Maybe you can get better at SS TIG than myself and I'll trade some other work if you want to weld up my mess. 3" IS decievingly large under these FFPW chassis. Looks like you are making hella good progress though! Lovin it! I may bug you on your thoughts on the painless harnesses when the time comes given our trucks appear to have many similar amenities.

[Desoto61]

May do that, I know they do it at work, but that's quite a different quality level then my project so I wasn't sure how necessary it was for this.

Yes, the passenger side is very busy, guess the driver's side was worse when there were floor mounted peddles. Honestly the only place I really want more room is beside the transfer case. Tons of space on the driver's side but very tight on the passenger side, hence the little jog I need to put in the pipe. Well by the same token I ended up getting a nice weatherpack crimper, so when you get there let me know.

So far I'm pretty happy with the Painless setup, though they've updated them in the last year or so, and there are some interesting alternatives out there, but if you time it right there are some good deals on the Painless stuff too. I got a $150 rebate AND one of their wire loom kits when I bought mine.

I almost sold my kit and went after the Isis kit (now called InfinityBOX). It's a bus based system like modern cars use. Actually a lot less wiring to do and way more flexible, but holy crap the price! It would make some of the stuff I'm doing a lot more simple, but I just couldn't justify the cost difference.