Its been a busy few days working on squeaky. With the rubicon less then a month away and im going to NY for almost 2 weeks on friday it doesnt leave me with much time to get stuff done. This project was WIRING!! Yay...how fun. For the past 3 maybe 4 years I usually wire my stuff up 10 minutes before leaving for the trail with the intent to install it the right way later. Well 3-4 years go by and **** got out of control. Calfire is probably going to call me and thank me for cleaning up my rats nest before I burnt down half the state.
Anyways, I had wires galore. I have 2 switches for rock lights, a switch for the big round red LEDs a switch for my e fan, a switch for my D2s a switch for my duallys (duallys are unmounted right now) 2 switches for my piaas which also have the rear lights wired into them and my rear locker switch. With 9 switches and none of them permanently mounted disaster was waiting to happen.
The location was tough for me to decide ideally I wanted the headliner but my concern was routing all the wires up there and if I didnt like it headliners are expensive and supposedly tough to get, I remember kyle had issues getting a headliner when his airbags went off and the body shop said they dont make them anymore. The knee bolster would be fine but I didnt like that because I have long legs and didnt want to accidentally hit them. I liked the spot behind the shifter but I was concerned with others touching buttons and something hitting them. Lastly, I wanted it easily and cheaply reversible. That is when I decided on the speedometer cluster cover. I texted Zach it is under 20 bucks to replace so its cheap and easily reversible. Its above my knees and away from others touching it.
First I had to mount it and I used the old t case factory skid to cut out a piece and bolt it to. Then I had to clean up the engine bay. I used a blueseas fuse block system that holds 12 fuses. I also added relays to everything. I went down to a stereo shop and got 2 gauge wire, I was going to get red and black but he gave me a few feet of red for free and 0 or 2 gauge can add up quick in price so I will live with having a red 2 gauge ground wire. In the end I cut out a ton of wire!
Here are some pics.
the angle makes the switches look uneven
I also have my fan switch mounted alone and up higher only thing not permanently mounted is the rear locker switch but it is tucked away. I dont know how much longer I will have an eaton or 10 bolt but I did put it in a location where I wont move.
Now its much safer and much cleaner! I used a combo of soldering and connectors to get the job done. Fused and relayed wiring should be much better!
I also got some time to wheel at drinkwater. It was VERY hot but the H3 cools SOOO much better with the fan shroud I ran a solid 10-12 degrees cooler. Also the lower rad hose stays put now so I cant slice it. I still want to rebuild my steering box but I found a guy who has a nissan xterra box for sale so I will probably put that one in and rebuild this one on my own time later. The rebuild kits are 20 bucks but a reman is over 200 so for that price I will rebuild it myself.
Other then that I have been driving a ton, just passed over 10k miles on the SAS and 2k miles on the engine swap.
Heres a poser shot from wheeling
