GMC Motorhome: Yep, more Ruby’s dash

Man, I sure hope I’m not boring some of you wanting to see other stuff…… I’m really sorry but I’ve gotten so much interest in this and well… I’m into it up to my eyeballs myself so yeah, it’s what’s on my mind so please excuse me to keep this pressure up.

Noticed this morning there’s a thread on Facebook about refinishing a dash…… if you’re following it great, the guy looks like he’s doing well.  In being deep into this dash AC thing, I think the time spent doing what’s needed to update the dash can get more traction using it to also go the one more step in making the dash AC work.  You would just about need to break the dash down as you do to refinish it maybe installing a new bigger Mac dash.  So stay tuned here……. I’ll get to the point of the refinishing the surfaces as soon as we get through all of this AC stuff.  So sit back and watch how things go……. I’ll give it all to you here.

So in that direction, yesterday I continued raking out the in dash wire wad…… The glove box area started looking like this Yeah man, somewhere it was felt 2 more fuse blocks were needed, the original harness had been completely opened and well, the wire wad dominates!  Felt it would have taken less time using hedge clippers but it’s important to follow each wire…. knowing what each was supposed to do.  No original wires can be harmed during this de-assing process…… Holy crap Batman …where did the Riddler go? Now we have 2 areas De-assed and the beat going on… the driver footwell will go next 

Lemme give you an example of why it’s important to follow every wire as it all comes out.  I followed this wire over to the driver side panel where it was connected and hidden into the factory harness… I think it was picking up the reverse light signal    BTW, the black box there at the right in the last pic was a motorized sewer gate valve control……… on the sidepanel…….. OK!  but you can see the light blue wire.  If this wire had just been cut under the dash and it somehow grounded or something…. there would be a “ghost in the machine”.  That stuff needs to be taken out at the harness and insulated… I leave the repair open so if there is any trouble in the future the tech can see the repair….. might help him…. 

In that the completed harness in the dash had been unwrapped, I found the PO had disconnected the infamious “nichrome” trigger wire to the small wire on the alternator.  This is something I wrote about on the tips page on the web site here many years ago.  Here is the 38″ long single strand “toaster heater wire” you do not want to have wrapped around your main harness   See the thing is this wire gets constant power bypassing the glove box fuse block right here hidden in the harness That heavy gauge brown wire comes from the battery to the headlight switch….. no fuse will blow if this single strand resister wire shorts out….here is that wire   If you read through “Alternator light circuit modification” will disconnect this voltage drop circuit recreateing a more useful circuit safely under the front hood.  Go take a read.  Here I cut out the wire from where it was soldered to the harness (you do not want power to reach this resister circuit) and reinsulated the connection.  Alt. circuit rewire will turn this circuit off.  These previous wiring mods need to be taken out completely. 

OK….. lets move outside to the firewall……

Had to get the guys going… I’m back….

So this is what I’m starting with….  One at a time….. the end of the day here we are….. now remember, there were tons of wires that had to come out but removing all the dash AC/heat box and all the vacuum, blower and Freon stuff out…. here is what you end up with Had to clean a quart of oil and grease… I think that was the corrosion barrier  Unbelievable isn’t it!  Opening the heater box we found there had been a freeloader Good thing we did this… the resister (heater) coils are on that inside wall!   The other side has a pile of 1/4″ air lines from the Power level air ride controls but we’ll clean that up too …

Donuts showed up… had to stop there…..  I’m back

  Here is where we started  and here it is de-assed Amazing isn’t it!    There was a pile oily stuff in there too.  A little bit more and all 3 coaches will be ready for the AC fitting…. stay tuned……

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