It's been 11 months since...
It's been 11 months since the body was last mounted on our Mk III chassis, and it was great to have it back on again, especially with the wheels, the suspension, and an engine poking through the body openings.
As we alluded to last month, the wiring phase of our project really debilitated our schedule for completion. As with most of our projects, we have a specific show in mind at which to debut our FFR Roadster project. This time, it was to be the 13th Annual Silver Springs Mustang Roundup in Central Florida. We've never missed a year of this show, and we've debuted completed projects from several magazines there. Alas, between a few parts delays and the wiring taking longer than we thought, we had to push back our projected completion date.
Our next option was the NMRA season opener in Bradenton, Florida, in March, but there was little chance we'd have the car back from paint then, let alone have time to install the interior, register the car, and so on.
So now we are planning for the 10th Annual Mustangs & Mustangs: Legends Havin' Fun show in Polk City, Florida, in April of this year. Keep an eye on our Web diary for up-to-date info on where we'll finally unveil the project.
It took about a weekend to wrap up the remaining wiring for the project. We had to finish wiring the dash area and then completely wire the nose of the car, including the lights, fan, horn, and so on. The nose wiring wasn't too stressful since the horns, fan, and lights were pretty much in fixed positions, or at least they were fixed once we decided on their mounting points.
As we said last month, the wiring isn't technically difficult; it's the thought that goes into parts placement, wire routing, and future servicing that takes up so much time. But it's time well spent. Mapping out the wiring harnesses on paper and noting special splices, crimps, fuse, and relay locations helps for any possible repairs or upgrades you may do.
Of course, the best-laid plans can still be foiled. For instance, we planned on having an open underdash area, so we mounted the EFI fuse block where we felt it was easily accessible. We then added an underdash block-off panel to clean up things and add security to our ignition wiring. In order to access the EFI fuses, we'll now have to remove the complete dash assembly. While it's only six screws and a few wiring plugs, we may still relocate the EFI fuses for easier servicing before the car is finished.
 If you saw last month's story...  If you saw last month's story on our Roadster project where we started our wiring, you'll remember we installed the kit-supplied headlight switch in a custom bracket to the left of the driver on the frame. The headlight switch includes a molded connector and terminals to wire the switch to your harness. As with pre-'68 Fords, there's a terminal on the headlight switch you can use to shut off the front parking lights, but this will require wiring the front and rear parking lights to the switch separately. |  Due to Florida statutes, we...  Due to Florida statutes, we have to build our Roadster with FFR's optional wiper kit. The kit comes with an off-low-high toggle switch for the wipers, but we passed on that and used an aftermarket rotary wiper switch and a billet knob on our dash. To maintain easy removal of our dash, we added another Weathertight wiring connector from MSD to the lone wiper switch. |  The Roadster dash is precut...  The Roadster dash is precut for a push-button horn setup, but we ended up using that location for our '65/'66 Mustang ignition-switch mounting. During a test-fit of the dash, we realized the perfect place for a horn button would be just above the ignition switch and a bit closer to the steering wheel, which would allow us to simply push the horn button with a fingertip without removing our hand from the steering wheel. We installed a stainless steel pushbutton for our horn that has a ring of blue LED illumination to match our Auto Meter Cobalt gauge lighting. |
 The Roadster kit comes with...  The Roadster kit comes with a red dash warning light that many people wire to their charging system to indicate a charging-system failure. We opted to use this warning light instead as a parking brake reminder. The lamp is wired to the parking-brake contact switch at the base of the parking brake (power goes through the dash light, and the contact switch grounds the circuit). Whenever the car is started and the parking brake is engaged, this light stays on as a warning to not drive off with the parking brake engaged. |  The dash wiring required a...  The dash wiring required a few different grounds (the speed-sensor instructions state a dedicated ground should be used). We simply ground away a bit of the frame's powdercoat and then utilized stainless steel tapping screws to secure our ground leads. Don't be afraid to use multiple grounds, as stacking ground wires can sometimes lead to electrical "noise" in a circuit and cause problems with sensitive devices such as stereo equipment, gauges, and so on. |  With the dash wiring finished,...  With the dash wiring finished, the ground wires connected, and our Optima battery hooked up, we connected the dash to the main harness via the preinstalled MSD Deutsch connectors and tested the circuits. The Auto Meter Cobalt blue-LED lighting is certainly striking. Oh, and everything worked great the first time we connected the dash. |