Monday, April 23, 2012

The Beast has been awakened

Friday evening I finished up the dash installation by installing the remaining panels.  I wanted to test the speedometer and other gauges, so I connected the battery to crank the truck up. Unfortunately the battery was so weak it would not turn over.  Apparently repeated use of the power locks just ran it down over time.  I went to Target and snagged some jumper cables, then cranked it up off my Yaris battery.  I was excited about it cranking up and the gauges seeming to work, so we took it for a short cruise around the block.  All seemed well until I went to turn the radio on.  "PROTECT" was the only thing across the front of the radio :( Apparently there is a short in some of the factory speaker wiring somewhere.


The dash with panels added in, but the radio bezel removed for testing the wires.




Not sure which wires might be the problem, I went ahead and cut the rear speaker wires away from the harness (as painful as it was) and then re-tested.  Still protect...  The previous owner only had the driver's side speakers connected, so I'm guessing that the short must be somewhere in the passenger side wiring.  Either way, I think I'm just going to replace all of it to be safe.


The rear speaker wiring


I also reinstalled the skid plate that protects the gas tank (this had to be removed to swap the e-brake cable).  Unfortunately during removal I ended up breaking the head off of one of the bolts, so I will have to drill this one out and replace the bolt/nut.  I went ahead and replaced all the other bolts with new ones just in case.  I properly tensioned the e-brake cable and tightened down all the bolts and connecting joints on that.  Went ahead and installed the rear driver's side fender flare also.  I had a spare exhaust tip lying around so I threw that on there for lulz.  It actually looks pretty good on the truck IMO.






I discovered a couple of other problems with it while driving it Sunday.  For one, I forgot to add additional coolant after replacing that part of the AC.  It got pretty hot but I didn't drive it long so it didn't get into the red or anything.  Going to add coolant when I get home.  The headlights don't seem to work on dim, but I'm not sure if the bright setting is actually bright or if it's actually the dim setting.  The headlights were re-wired at some point.  I'm not sure if he added HID or what exactly, but I may just trace the wiring back to the fuse box and redo all of that to be safe.

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