Each year we take a group of kids to Candy Cane Lane in Milwaukee to see the Christmas decorations. They all load into Chummy and we make a party out of the gawking at the gaudy decorations. Santa is there and even comes inside to greet the children. This year was no exception. On our way home I decided to defrost the front window since I was somewhat unfamiliar with the road. I turned on the defroster and smelled a sickening wire burning smell. My thought was maybe something was wrong. I turned off the defrosters. Turned out that the switch which works the defrost and the heater for the cabin area was burned out. This should be a simple fix, I thought. Then I started to look for a new switch. I searched everywhere with no success. The manufacturer of the switch denied ever making it and Airstream was even less help. I dug into the junk yards and backyards of every conceivable place which might have this switch and could not find it. I knew this search was not going to end well.
One day while digging in a cold and very dirty junk yard I saw a switch which was nice. This switch was not perfect but nice. It had the required three place settings I needed. The only problem is that the face plate would not fit into Chummy. The junk yard man offered to give me the face plate free. What a deal, I could not pass it up. I took my new switch and free face plate home and began to wonder how I would fit it into Chummy's dashboard. There was no other way but to rebuild the dashboard to accommodate the new switch and faceplate. The saga begins.
I found that it is a fairly easy task to remove a dashboard. there are many screws but with my high speed Dremel cutter and electric screwdriver they were no match for me. Then there are the wires. thousands of wires. I began to label each and everyone of them. carefully marking all so when I was ready to put it back together all I would need to do is follow my labels. I placed color codes on each gauge and wrote with large black print. Every wire got a piece of tape which stated its intended purpose. When I was all done I began to cut and cut and cut. I cut wires for an afternoon. Eventually The dash was loose just a few cables left and I would remember where they went. Right? Zip, they were gone, the dash was in my hands and on its way to the basement.
My next step was to cut the dash into little pieces to use as a template so I could then cut a piece of Oak to replace the plastic. I began cutting, and filing. No turning back now. The large plastic part that went up to the windows was carefully cleaned, sanded and painted with several coats of a special paint which filled the house with pleasant odors.
With my new templates cut, I began to cut out the oak, sand and fit the pieces into the proper places. All was going very smoothly. I thought I would be finished within the week. I applied several coats of finish to the wood and was ready to put the dash back together.
This should have been the easy part. Remember I had labelled all of the wires? What I had forgotten was that there were more than one pink wire and there were several blue ones and many black ones and quite a few red ones and hundreds of white ones and where did that orange one come from and who put that brown one in there and then someone snuck into Chummy and changed a wire to green. My labels made no sense. You see what I did was to move the gauges around to where I thought they would be easier to see. O.K. I began to hook up wires. Thousands of wires which went here and there and everywhere. I stared for hours until it started to make sense and then it did not. The day came, I had all the wires hooked up to something. I called Fran out and said I am ready to try and start Chummy. I turned the key------------and ----------------nothing happened.
This was the start of almost a month of tracking down what I did wrong. I belong to this internet forum where other people like me who own these things get together and share our sorrows. I posted a help entry and got many replies. A fellow member from Chicago even drove up to try and find the problem. No one could figure out what was wrong. Nigel came out one day and unwrapped a few miles of wires to look for a short or blown fuse but found nothing. I was starting to think that Chummy was going to become a lawn ornament. I was going to fill him with mud and plant tulips in him. Then one Sunday I got a call from Peter in Texas who is on the forum and he walked me through some of the wiring. The best thing he did was to teach me how to read OHMS on my meter. I quickly ran out to Chummy with my new knowledge and discovered that when I changed gauges around I also switched the wiring on two gauges. When I switched the wiring back, Chummy started. One month, three hundred hours and more bad words than my dog Cromwell will ever hear again later and Chummy was running. Now all I had left was to get the rest of the dash wired correctly. the headlights, turn signals, horn, and all those things operating. With my new found knowledge of OHMS I was quick to track down good and bad wires and soon had everything operational.
My next step was to assemble the heater switch, remember that? This little project only took a couple days to get it working properly and to make new cable runs for the face plate. I was on a roll. Fran and I put back the large dash cover and she carefully put Velcro on the padded overlay while I braced the new gauge panel. It was nice to have good help. Now the dash is finally complete. A wonderful new oak and simulated leather look vinyl to replace the ugly faded plastic and peeling taped on wood grain. The best part is we have a new face plate built into this dash that operates the heater and defrosters.
