I hemmed and hawed a bit before deciding to dig into this and see what sort of electrical problems I can run into later. As part of cleaning and painting the engine compartment there was a huge black glob around the wire harness connections. I picked away at that and got to the metal underneath. I also found the sheet metal was nicely torn where the parking brake is attached. I'll post the repair of that in another posting. FYI I did reinforce it with another layer in that repair.

Some questions for the group:
1. Has anyone else seen this sort of blob around the wire harness connection? On the floor is a pan where I got some of the stuff. It was an offwhite that resembled bondo. It might be bondo or some sort of glue. I'm just curious if anyone else has seen this.
2. The gasket pic - What's the correct grommet? Only 1 wire goes through but this grommet has 3 holes.
3. The gasket pic - Any suggestions on finding either the gasket made or a material to make my own? It's a thin black foam of some sort.

 

Here's the gasket pic I referred to in my first post.

 

It's called brush-on seam sealer and it's used pretty much everywhere. Everybody sells it.



The grommet is designed to accommodate different combinations of factory options. Your car only used one of the holes.

I've not seen this gasket sold, so you're probably on your own for a replacement.

 

Hey Joe. I'm good with the black seam sealer. What's not real apparent from these pictures is a bunch of white/yellow stuff was caked up under it. In the 3rd pic there's a tray on the floor. You can see a bit of the crud in there. Since it was caked on in the 4th pic on that wire connector (or is it a resistor, I'll keep it in the circuit) thing I was wondering if the white/yellow bondo-like stuff was put on at the factory or if this got added sometime later.

 

I've seen the factory sealer in both black and white. The latter turns yellow over time. What I can't really tell from the pictures is if the stuff you've found is the factory-style brush-on or a foam-in-place sealer, which would have been added by a previous owner.

 

It might have been foam. The black stuff on the surface was tacky. The white stuff underneath was hard. Are the firewall connections typically gooped up with seam sealer this heavy?