The interior has now entered the mock up stage.

The courtesy lights will be set to operate automatically on a door ground switch, however, there is a cut off toggle for the circuit should the doors be open for an extended period of time ; like at a show or a meet.

This fabricated harness, as with all other wire harness fabrication for this vehicle, is color-coded and has a detailed schematic, and is placed in the service manual for this vehicle as a reference.

I don't care too much for carpets that have been cut or slit to clear brackets and mechanical access portals. The cuts and slits stretch and degrade the form fit of the carpet over time. The integrity of the carpet holds much longer when the carpet is brass grommeted for mounting holes and access ports. This is a tedious task to perform as it entails many trial fits of the carpet to have the various grommet punches align with various mounting holes properly. However, the effort is well worth it when one considers the end result of grommets vs the cut n slash approach.

Ok...enough tease...it all comes out again.

Before continuing with the Quiet Ride Solutions damper / insulation install and the driver side firewall pad, several different mechanical aspects of this particular build need to be tasked.

The mounting lugs for the Hurst Pro-Matic 2 Ratchet Shifter need to be installed in the floorpan tunnel along with creating the shifter cable access hole, this has to be done so that the insulation can be punched at those points. A tedious task, yes, and that is why it ends up as a quiet ride.

After installing the tracks and risers on the seat, I centerlined the cab frame steering column port to the driver area floor and trial fit the seat for optimal fore / aft moment and recline position. Once it was dialed-in I scribed the footprint of the track into the floorpan. Then I fabricated the seat mount / pan reinforcement bars out of 1/4 inch steel plate.

These bars, of course, install under the pan with only the studs entering the interior and are the same length / width as the seat mounting foot. Since this was a bench seat truck, the OEM seat mountings do not align with bucket seats. The function of these bars copies the factory mount technique by clamping the seat foot to the floor pan and thereby distributing seat weight while strengthening the pan structure.

In other words, if by some odd quirk of misfortune this vehicle were to be involved in a, let's say, high speed roll-over accident ; the seats will not rip-out of the floor.

OEM style seat reinforcement along with, wearing a proper personal safety restraint, significantly reduces the chance of being ejected from a vehicle during a roll over.

Then it all goes back in again.

Now that the seat is bolted in, the console and the shifter positions can be mocked-up for optimum reach / access and their respective positions scribed to the floorpan.

The position of the shifter needed to have ample hand clearance for PRND21 selection, in both normal and ratchet modes. between the gauge pod and the console ; along with a comfortable shifter knob hand-rest in D.

This concept bundles the engine sensor harness in one neat package so the wiring is harnessed and not strewn about the under-dash like so much "spa get tee".

Removal and installation of the pod is simply a matter of disconnecting the electrical plugs and removing two mounting bolts.

There will be some redundancy : that being, WATER TEMP in the cluster and pod, OIL PSI in the cluster and a fourth AutoMeter 2 5/8 Pro Comp gauge.

NOTE

The original plan for this cluster was to take it to Moe's, a speedo instrument shop I knew of in Los Angeles, CA, to have the speedo re-calibrated and re-faced for 140 MPH and the tach re-calibrated and re-faced for 7000 RPM.

I'm no longer residing in Los Angeles. So what I have decided to do is let you, the potential buyer know, that you could break the speedo and or the tach if you heavy foot the Special on a top end run. The cluster will be sufficient all day long at 90 MPH but the top end potential of the Special will easily 360 the speedo.

In other words, I'm leaving the cluster as is and re-face and re-calibration is on you, the buyer, if you think you will WANT to go more than 90 MPH. Last I checked the fee for this modification was approximately $ 350.00.

Here is a search engine for speedometer and instrument shops, some do custom modifications and some do not. The ones that do have samples of their work, like this :

OEM design has 12 ga. wiring for the P / N and 14 ga. for the B/ U.

Rather than run the electrical load through the Hurst switch, I decided it was in the best interest of switch longevity to run the loads through relays.

Shown are the Hurst shifter, the fabricated quick disconnect wire harness and the modification to the OEM harness.

Even though not necessary for the B / U lighting, I am still going to run that load through relays.

The shifter is designed to be removed and installed by disconnecting the wire plug at the shifter, removal of 4 mounting bolts, the shift cable bolt and the shift cable clip. It is easy enough to do, however, the only reason to do so would be to replace the weak link in the Hurst system ; which would be the P / N B / U switch at the shifter. Running the load through relays should result in years of service from the Hurst switch.

Note service access for cab mount bolt.

Poly mounts have already been installed on this truck replacing the OEM rubber, so it is very doubtful that they would need to be replaced. However, the access for the cab mount bolts would just be a matter of removing the carpet and the insulation will remain intact because one would not have to cut it all up to gain access to the bolts if need be.