A month or so ago one of my regular customers called me about his 72 Cutlass Supreme which I had just rebuilt the engine on and brought the suspension back up to par last summer.

He made the mistake of taking it to a stereo chain to have them put a new sound system in. A week or two later, while sitting at a stoplight, he smelled smoke, then saw smoke, then felt fire - under the dash. Long story short, by the time the fire department got it out, it had destroyed everything under the dash and made its way into the engine bay, where it melted the distributor cap like an ice cream cone, and took out all the wiring and Plastics on that side as well.

Despite all that, the damage was barely visible from the inside and not visible at all from the outside with the exception of a blackened windshield. A look under the dash however told a completely different story. There was nothing left but a big rat's nest of wire and plastic burnt to a crisp, from the headlight switch all the way over to the passenger kick panel. The only things that survived unscathed were the dashboard, the far left AC duct and, ironically, the cardboard glove box.

So now I'm left to figure out all the little things that were under there, and all the big things, and where to get them. Given the prices of just individual pieces that I'm finding on the net, he's looking at a pretty good chunk of change, that I know he doesn't have, in order to put this thing back together. I'll be redoing the wiring harness myself, as a custom job, thinking about putting a breakout box Style Junction Block in the engine compartment with test points for all the circuits, and relocating fuse box there as well.

I'm throwing this Hail Mary out there in hopes that someone could maybe point me in a direction where to get started with the under dash hvac work. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

You need a parts car. If you don't want to get a parts car or if it isn't in the budget of the car's owner then just go completely aftermarket (i.e. Flaming River steering column, Vintage Air AC, Painless wiring kit, etc.). Of course, this would probably be more expensive than a parts car. There are so many pieces to the dashboard that putting the puzzle together piece by piece would be near impossible. Good luck.

 

Welcome to the site, sorry about your customers car. There are a few ways to go about this. The easiest is to get a used or new replacement harness from another 72, unplug the old, remove, and reinstall the replacement. You can place a classified want add here, I'm sure someone has one in good shape. M&H wiring harness, American Autowire, and others have both replacement and generic harnesses. There are other co's out there also.

 

Is the stereo installer taking any ownership of the issue?

 

No, and there's no way to prove that that's where the fire started. I suspect it may have been aggravated by a leaky firewall.

 

A relocated fuze box will hurt resale value. He can get a manual from the Internet for 25 bucks to help locate what goes where. The ductwork can be found here. I have an extra heater box and a/c control, a speedometer, dash board, etc. if he's interested.
The under dash wiring can be bought repop, why put in used that may be bad too. Headlight switch can be bought new ( a button has to be pushed back on the switch to remove the headlight ****). No other way to remove it.

 

He's already done a fair amount of customization, and he claims he will never sell it belongs to his son when he's done with it. The fact that the insurance company totaled it has already hurt the resale value anyway. I intend to do all the wiring myself, I looked into the aftermarket ones, and the ones I came across were generic, and sounded as though they were just bundles of wire that I would have to do just as much work on as doing it from scratch.

 

Find a decent used dash harness, unwrap the whole thing to check the wires and re-wrap it. All your connectors will be at the correct locations and it will fit perfectly. When the harness is unwrapped you can replace wires that have been spliced or are chaffed. That's what I did and I've never had a problem. It took me about a day to do the whole thing

 

Buy the classic update harness from American Auto Wire... there's no way I'd rewire a car with old style fuse box.

https://www.americanautowire.com/vie...ic-update-kit/