1976 280Z Restoration Project

[wheee!]

On the topic of multi-tasking, I started work on the seat covers and seat heaters today. I was pleasantly surprised to find the seat foam in the seats I picked up this winter are perfect! 

 

[Captain Obvious]

2 hours ago, wheee! said:

I started work on seat heaters

Man that looks fantastic. I sure wish I had something like that in my car.

I don't drive it in the middle of winter (when there's salt on the roads), but there's still a significant portion of time before and after that when  I would really enjoy seat heaters. I either need warm air blowing out of the dash vents, or I need to stick one hand at a time under a leg to warm them up.

As of right now, I still haven't figured out an easy way to get hot air out the dash vents, and sticking fingers under a leg against cold vinyl just doesn't do it for me.

[wheee!]

Seat heaters are a great way to relieve a sore back on a long drive. I am partial to them in my other cars and they were an easy mod to do at the same time as the seat covers.

The Vintage Air system lets me push warm air out the centre or side vents too!

[wheee!]

First bezel out of the bath with a light sanding with 600 grit. Looks good! Second one almost done.  

 

[wheee!]

Of course I can’t have all successes. The wiring harness for the seat heaters was wired completely wrong from the factory. Chinese quality control.
The microcomputer circuit blew instantly and now I need a new harness. It was all plugged together from the beginning and I simply turned it on to find nothing worked. Then I found this...

[Captain Obvious]

Woof. You and electrics aren't getting along so well lately are you?

So from the pic above, it appears that only two of those wires are making any connection at all. All the rest of the wires are no-connects. That was enough to fry stuff? That's a bummer.   

[ConVerTT]

4 minutes ago, Captain Obvious said:

Woof. You and electrics aren't getting along so well lately are you?

 

No kidding.  You'd think it was a British car ....

[wheee!]

12 minutes ago, Captain Obvious said:

Woof. You and electrics aren't getting along so well lately are you?

So from the pic above, it appears that only two of those wires are making any connection at all. All the rest of the wires are no-connects. That was enough to fry stuff? That's a bummer.   

The problem wasn’t just missing the contacts, the power and ground wires were in the wrong places and the IC fried in the controller. The wires that did connect were wrong as well. 
I have ordered a new kit to replace the entire harness. I will definitely check the connections before powering it up. 

[wheee!]

I finished spraying the chrome onto the bezels. I know it’s not perfect, but until there are reasonable reproductions in chrome, they will do!

 

[Captain Obvious]

Right, but because most of the wires didn't line up with contacts, it looks like only two wires out of all of them made contact at all:

It's just unfortunate that it only took those two to cause the damage you're seeing.

 

[wheee!]

Well, full disclosure, I moved the pins to the proper connections at first thinking it was a simple misalignment. Unfortunately without any schematics, it wasn’t until hours of internet picture searching later that I found that the ground pin was swapped with the hot so alignment wasn’t the only issue. In fact the two that were connected are the only two correct positions...[emoji37]

[wheee!]

Here’s a good comparison of the old paint code 240 and the new DeBeers water based E2335 BRG. I think I nailed it. Close to the original colour but a lot more metallic.