2 small updates for this week. On Saturday I stopped by Clint’s place and installed the new fusebox I got for him. His car’s electrical system has always been a little weird, and while everything was more or less working it had that air of ‘could be better’ about it. Plus, a lot of his fuses were visibly melted and overrated. Plus he has a weird stumbling in his fuel system that we haven’t been able to track down yet.
Anyway, the end result of 8 hours laying on my side on the passenger’s side floor turned this:
Into this:
There are still some loose wires here and there from the door lock mods and door poppers that he installed, but the fusebox is in brand new condition, all of the relays have been replaced, socket terminals were cleaned and tightened up, and the main harness re-wrapped. Every terminal in the fusebox was cut off, the wire ends cleaned and sanded to perfect copper, and then new terminals crimped and soldered on.
Some of the old terminals in the original fusebox were very dangerous, like this one for one of the engine management circuits:
You can see that the wires were barely hanging on, with many strands not even attached to the terminal. Lots of exposed copper, oxidized terminal ends, and melted/burned plastic fused to the contacts. How some of this stuff was even working at all is a mystery to me. Since many of the fuses that were showing this kind of decay were the ones responsible for the fuel pump and other engine control systems, we have high hopes that some of the strange fuel system glitches will be resolved or at least reduced when the motor is back together!
As for my own car, there hasn’t been much to do lately! I took advantage of some free time this weekend to remove the windshield cowl and install some wire mesh over the fresh air intake opening. It’s a giant 12″x4″ cutout under the wiper blades with basically nothing to stop dirt, debris, leaves, etc from getting inside and collecting in the evaporator box. I cleaned the box last year and didn’t find much crud, but when I cleaned Clint’s it was like a compost heap inside. That was enough to motivate me to install this fix.
Here’s the cowl, ready to remove: 
After removing it, there was plenty of crud to clean up.
Some scrubbing bubbles made short work of all the filth
Here’s what the huge opening looks like. No wonder stuff falls in there!
A cheap ventilation screen from Lowes, with a rough pattern of the opening underneath it 
After trimming the screen to fit, some RTV holds it in place
With the cowling reinstalled, the fix is completely invisible. Worth 10 bucks and a couple hours’ time!