After all the work yesterday on getting the fuel lines ready, today was going to be an easy day focused on getting the dash wired. Where yesterday was sunny and beautiful, today was cold, dreary and rainy and staying inside rather than in the garage seemed to be a good idea.

As it turned out, I spent about four more hours in the garage today just getting a bunch of miscellaneous things wrapped up.

While out looking for some parts this morning I decided to get a fuse holder for an amplifier in the car. I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do for a stereo, but the amp I’m most likely to use is a Diamond Audio D7 I’ve had for four or five years and haven’t ever really used. Its a great amp, but draws a LOT of current. The amp needs a 150 amp ACG fuse. The power to the amp would come straight from the battery and I figured it would be a lot easier to at least wire the power feed from the battery before the body was on and the trunk was riveted down.

I had a few feet left of the 4 gauge wire for the alternator. I soldered and crimped on a large ring connector.

Using a uni-bit in the drill, I drilled a hole in the trunk floor for the power line and used two small bolts to hold the fuse holder to the drivers side trunk wall of the upper part of the trunk ahead of the rear leg of the roll-bar. This tucks it well out of the way. For now there’s no fuse in the holder, but at least I have power to the trunk now for whenever I do install the amplifier.

Another loose end I wanted to get taken care of was the pipes going into the heater core. I had lost one of the O-rings a few weeks ago and didn’t want to forget to get one installed in both fittings before I created a Roman fountain of coolant instead of gas when I filled up the cooling system.

A trip to Lowes and I had a package of the appropriately sized O-rings.

The o-rings fit over the aluminum pipes and seal them to the ports on the heater core.

Unfortunately these fittings are in a spot that’s tough to get to with a wrench so they aren’t more than finger tight right now. When I post next weekend that I sprayed coolant all over the place, you’ll know why — because I posted I didn’t tighten these and promptly forgot. I have to get a shorter wrench or something to tighten them.

Once getting these done, I decided I wanted to get the hose mounted that was going from the de-gas tank to the coolant recovery tank. I had mounted the plastic recovery tank a couple weeks ago to the drivers side of the engine bay and had hose to run between them.

The line comes out of the de-gas tank, and is mounted with a plastic clip to the F-panel.

The line then follows the top of the X-member over to the drivers side. Because the two tanks are at the same height in the car and the line will be filled with coolant, it’ll still move coolant just fine even though the line is five feet long and dips fairly low in the car.

The line is clamped to the F-panel on the drivers side and then attaches to the recovery tank.

This was originally where I intended to stop today, just to take it easy. I decided to do a bit of sheet metal work in the rear, which turned into getting all the side walls of the trunk mounted.

This was the first time in at least six months that I’d done any panel mounting… thankfully the silicone was still good. I drilled the passenger side upper trunk panel, and got it riveted in.

The drivers side panel also got riveted in. I had planned to stop here, but decided to to the rear outboard panels of the trunk as well. There are two small pieces on the inside, but I can’t mount them before I rivet the trunk floor.

After drilling the holes in the steel frame, I applied a bead of silicone caulk.

The panel riveted on.

The passenger side panel went on the same way.

I didn’t mount the trunk floors yet — I think I’m going to wait until the IRS is aligned, but I did get a good bit of the steel drilled even if they’re not riveted yet.

My plan, as of right now, is to start the engine next weekend. To do so, I need to do a few things:

• Finish ignition wiring — it looks like I need to buy an MSD ignitition, which I have installed before and can do quickly
• Fill coolant
• Attach a few sensors from the dash
• Get power to dash sensors
• Ground the engine
• Wire up the starter.

That’s a very doable list for a day’s work. My hope is to get those done next Saturday and start it on Sunday. If not, I’ll definitely be to that point by the following weekend. Once I reach engine-start, I’ll take a week off from work and try to finish as much as I can on the car. Its definitely feeling good to have the car legal in time for the Factory Five Open House in June.