More dash restoration, and a bit of flare

Continuing to work on the restoration of the rear-section of the dash, I completed the duct work install.  Thanks to my buddy Dennis, who sandblasted the main dash support bracket and primered it for me :)

Looks so much better with the silver-colored metal rather than rust.  Also, those ducts were all absolutely filled with dirt, dirt dauber nests, and other nasty business.  It's hard to tell from the pictures, but I cleaned as much dirt as possible from all the surfaces of the dash during the rebuild.  If you compare this picture to the first one where the dash is removed, you can see how much more vividly the black stands out.

Also went about rewiring the radio harness.  Unfortunately the previous owner did some pretty janky wiring, so that wasn't particularly fun.  A lot of googling and wire tracing later I figured out what each wire did and connected the new radio harness.

Before:

After:

Apologies for the blurriness.

Waiting on some pieces of the dash to come in.  While doing that, I had ordered a proper 4x4 fender for the driver's side as well as a set of fender flares.  When the fender/flares arrived, I was happily greeted with a set of mud flaps also!  Awesome!  I always feel like a douche driving a truck without mud flaps during the rain.

The flares/flaps are actually from a Pathfinder.  The front lines up perfect, but the rears require modification.  I'm not one to fear modifications.

Bam... so sexy.

Mmmm just look at that flare.

After looking over the rear ones and doing some test fitting, I decided to tackle that.  Dad came out and helped, so that made the job a little easier having someone to hold it while trying to drill holes and such business.  About 45 minutes or so and I had the first rear flare mounted.  To get the flap installed in the rear I think I'll have to remove the wheel so I can drill a hole, so I'll do that later.

Best buddies :)

She's already looking pretty awesome!  I hope to get the proper fender painted and installed next week, then put the flares on the driver's side.  Right now the passenger side is the only one with flares on it.

As you can see in the picture above, one of the little plastic hood grilles is missing.  It actually flew out one day while I was driving it.  I looked on ebay and found one for $8 shipped.

At this point, the blog is caught up until about 5pm today.  This evening, the side AC vents arrived and I was able to drop the dash in :)  Couldn't get any pictures because it got dark and I was in a hurry to get as much done as I could.  I'll definitely take some pictures in the morning and post another update.