I am making some improvements to my Morris Traveller. I wanted to ask about the dashboard underneath and behind the steering column. At the moment this is open, so you can see all the wires (see photo attached - the steering column is in the top left hand corner).
IMG_0644.JPG (1.93 MiB) Viewed 3223 times
Can someone tell me if it's meant to look like this, or if I am eg missing a panel?
Nope most look like that although wires can be tidied away behind the glovebox- Careful it looks like you have a bare wire under there ! What year is it, as it appears to have an elephants trunk but a round Smith's heater ?
The wires can be gently tucked upon the bulkhead behind / underneath the glove boxes but make sure all the connections are sound first or you will have loose wires and things not working . Check that yellow wire, it may be live and short out if it touches metal.
The elephant trunk is the heater hose which goes through the engine bay into the car to get 'fresh' air and the heater for a 1969 should have a flat front with a lever that goes up and down into one of 3 slots. It looked like an old type round one tho from the round switch I could see on the other side of the steering column. It may simply be the angle.
The heater looks exactly correct for a car of that age. The extra switch could be for any accessory that has been fitted in the past - reversing light, fog light, one of those stick-on heated rear window things....... It appears to only have one wire connected though?
I agree, there does seem to be one original bullet connection - possibly from the indicator switch? - which has become disconnected. Does the horn work correctly?
The white or cream coloured wires hanging down don't look original either and look untidy so it would be worth checking where they run to and having a tidy-up but generally it looks fairly present and correct!
I use spiral cable warp at work, great for tidying up cabling. Makes it easy to then tie up out of sight. Shrink wrapping connectors is always good as well.
That's really helpful - thank you guys!! I'm fairly new at this so it's rather scary - v reassuring to have such nice people to ask - and to know that broadly everything is in the right place!
The plan is to tidy everything up and make sure things are connected as they should be (I think the purple one is the wire for the horn) but it's a slow process as I am trying to make sense of the wiring diagram in the workshop manual - for a non-engineer, it takes a while (but the colours do help!)
You can use adhesive plastic pads which stick onto the metal under the dash.
These pads take a cable tie so you can effectively lift one or more cables up under the base of the dash and out of sight.
Another method is to drill two holes in the under side of the dash at each side of the car and run a fairly tight bungee cord like a washing line across the dash base. You can then lift up the wires and cable tie them neatly to the bungee cord.
As mentioned above make sure all the connections are tight and inspect closely once the wires are cable tied. Works for me!
