Wait.... it's not Root Beer anymore? Dang, it's going to be hard to not call it that.

I'm thinking also going with a set of Cragar Soft 8 wheels. 7's up front and 8's in the back.

255/60R15 up front and 275/60R15 out back.

Those will look great Nate. Can't wait to see the transition.

Starting working on the wiring in the dash today..didn't finish because I was also helping Brian with one of his trucks. I'm really glad I dug into this. There were melted wires in the harness, but the biggest problem was all the splices that had been made using butt connectors and those blue quick-splice doohickeys.

Dash cleaned out of old wiring:



Old crusty harness:


New wiring going in. I used dielectric grease on all the connectors:



One thing I eliminated was the EGR timer circuit and also this harness did not have provisions for the delay wiper circuit. Oh well. I'm going back down Sunday to finish up.

good thing you replaced the wiring .It would have sucked doing so much work to it and it burn up on you . I find alot of over spliced wiring in these old vans .
Just a good idea to check any new van you get for now on .
Oh thats a tip for everyone : )
Nice work Nate

Nice job Nate. You just saved your self a lot of future problems!

Good to see your keeping it Nate...looking forward to progress pics..

Nate, did you trace which circuits were connected to the melted wires?

If they were for instance the wires which run to the rear where someone would attach a trailer, I'd be sorely tempted to replace the entire run all the way back. If they were connected to any of the fusible links, well; I'm sure you know the drill.

You should keep the old harness at least for the connectors; I've often wished they were still readily available. Those original multi-tap provision bullet connectors are pretty sweet to wire in when you need additional circuits which can be disconnected quickly in the future, like for a stereo. I especially like having lots of the original color code wire available when extending a circuit, so I've collected several harnesses over the years.

If you decide to reinstall the intermittent wiper system, I'm sure I could help you map out the wiring to support it. Your previous harness would have had the connectors necessary to do a good job, and even if the bulkhead connector was missing the necessary home switch sense wire, it's super simple to pop the terminal out and swap it over. I did just that on mine, which allowed me to keep the original color code wire.

good deal buddy, wiring is a mess im unwilling to screw with, im fortunate to not have to do too much of it. I bet this old girl is gonna be sweet when shes done.

Craig..the harness running back to the rear lighting is in good shape. I just think that with so many splices and ugly "fixes" that were done to the original harness contributed to the mess.

I will check everything before hooking the battery back up.