Day 3: What am I doing?!

Day 3

Luke Kirchner

What am I doing?!

My dad knows a lot about cars. I don't know a ton about building one from scratch. That's why I proposed this A-term! But this morning I woke up with a checklist of things to do on my own while my dad was in San Antonio for a one-day work trip. Not the first time he has overestimated my abilities...


The first step was to attach the new alternator to the wiring harness adapter. While this seemed like it would be an easy process, these nuts were rusted on so bad that it took hours to break the seal. On top of that, the nuts were a size in between standard wrench sizes, so I had to do some outside-of-the-box thinking to get them off. 


Before

After


Next up was for me to take the wiring harness and route it into the car. Yes, you heard that right... the entire wiring harness. Throughout the entire car...... please come back from San Antonio, dad. The harness was still broken up into three pieces, so I started with the trunk harness. I laid out the wires based on the labels we had made and placed the connecters right next to where they would end up attaching. I was going to wait until my dad came back to do the final connections. 

Setting the harness in the trunk
I was actually shocked at how easy the trunk harness went in! I then went back into the house, looked at the main dash harness, and made a game-time decision to postpone that until my dad got back. Fortunately, the engine bay harness was simple enough, as it snaked along the edge of the bay. That just dropped right in and we were set. 

The last step for today was to get the pushrods in the sun visors. Something I've come to learn is that if my dad says something will be "easy", it will take all day. Strangely enough, all our "tough" projects that we were dreading have gone extremely smooth so far. This was no exception. What should've been an easy installation ended up me using my entire strength to push this tiny rod into the visor. Eventually I got it, but I was pooped. I needed instruction on what to do. Although it was a tough day, I do feel good about the setup for installing the harness tomorrow!





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