4x4 Parts Shop, Colorado Springs, CO 80915

[threecol_two]Now that you’ve seen the behind-the-scene’s of powder coating and water jet cutting, its time to get back to the buildup. P3 is patiently waiting for us to finish the interior. And although the outside is looking pretty sweet, the inside leaves a lot to be desired!

First things first, wiring. First let us say that we’ve always hated wiring. Stock Scout wiring is made up of two color wires, black and green. We’re sure there are more, but a majority of them are these two colors, and it makes it very difficult for a guy like me to make head-or-tails with it. Luckily for me, Nate is an electrician, so we don’t have to do it. Even so, the stock wiring was on its way out, and a new harness from painless wiring was on its way in.

Now there are several aftermarket wiring companies, so we won’t claim that painless is the best for everyone, but it is my favorite in terms of price and availability. Its also pretty simple to put in.

The first part of any wiring job is always the most freaky for me. Its when you take the wiring harness out of the box and lay it in the rig. This is where most people freak, simply because it looks very intimidating. Yet even with what looks like chaos, there is a very organized harness sitting in front of you. Painless Performance Products, PPP for short, pre-wires all the different sections of the harness. There is a dash harness, an engine harness, a headlight sections, and a tail light sections. All of the sections are pre-wire tied together in a neat bundle. So all we need to do is route the wires to their specified locations.

If you’re asking yourself: “Sounds good, but how in the world do you know what section is what?!?!” The answer is simple. Not only does PPP print the wires with numbers, they also print them with what harness they belong to, what thing they go to, and what wire it is, and they have that printing every 2 feet on the wire.

(This wire belongs in the dash harness. If you can focus better than my camera, you can read that this wire goes to the ignition switch, start terminal).

And that’s why we buy PPP harnesses. It’s that simple. We once installed their 18 circuit harness in my Scout in 16 hours, and that includes tearing all the old wiring out of it! Just read the wire, and put it where it belongs!

Moving on. While Nate was hard as work running the wiring, we were hard at work putting together the dash. We had a set of Auto Meter gauges including the Arctic White Hot rod kit with optional tach, clock, air gauge, temp gauge, and oil temperature gauge. Nate, being an electrician also found where ARB gets their switches and bought a boatload of them for the new switch panel, that way all the switches match.

To give the new dash panel a clean look, we took the aluminum to our wire wheel and buffed it out. This gave us a random looking pattern with a slight shine. All in all is looked sweet. The next part was pretty simple, all we did was push the gauges into the panel, and then put the panel onto the new dash. Some trimming was needed, but not too much.

We also used small 1/8″ stainless steel Allen bolts to secure the panel to the dash. Then we reassembled the stock knobs and switches and Nate wired the harness to the new gauges

Next, we installed the new gauge and switch panel. The panel is located directly in front of the shifters. This will hold our trans and oil temperature gauges, as well as a host of ARB-style switches. If it looks different than the one you saw during the previous day, its because we needed to shave it a bit for clearance.

If you’re wondering why you’d need so many switches, just ask Dale Durham of the RMB group! Remember that there are 3 switches for the ARB system, then you have the off-road lights, winch controls (armed, and forward/back), the auxiliary air compressor, Rock Lites for night-wheeling, and Nate hinted to a couple that, when turned on or off in sequence, would be a theft deterrent!.

Now we realize you all can see the 4 stick shifts. Let us explain what does what. The big shifter is no less than Art-Carr’s G-Gate Performance Shifter. The two small round ones control the Atlas II transfer case. The small shifter in the middle (directly under the gauge/switch panel) controls the Klune-V Underdrive. Pretty clean package if you ask us. Oh, and yes, we powder coated the tranny cover to match the dash, seats, and cage! ;)

Here are a couple more pictures from a distance.

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