Dash

One of the more complicated bits that gets transferred from the Miata to the Westfield is the wiring harness. It doesn’t seem like it should be that bad, but the wiring harness in a modern car, even one as simple as the Miata, is usually pretty darn complicated.

Yesterday I had made pretty good progress on getting the harness out of the rear of the car and from under the hood, but that left the part inside the cockpit. The easiest way to get to that is to pull out the dashboard, so that’s what I did today.

It gives the car a rather different look, doesn’t it?

It actually makes the cockpit feel kind of nice and spacious.

You can see some of the wiring harness in that picture, but even with the dash removed the wiring harness goes into some places which are hard to follow. For example, the ECU is hiding underneath the passenger’s feet.

Once I finish getting the wiring harness out, there’s still a challenge remaining. More than half of this wiring is for features which the Westfield doesn’t have. Frivolous features such as the radio and the fan. That means that I can go through the wiring harness and cull out all wires which aren’t going to be needed. I can tell that’s going to be a mess, but it seems worthwhile. The fewer unnecessary bits the Westfield has, the easier it will be to work on.