hi guys, beating a dead horse here im sure you are thinking. there seems to be a few threads on the subject , but this is my attempt at it.

i have pictures scattered everywhere and will do my best to bring them all to one place and get them on here.

i am in need of some guidance so please chime in

the story:

i have a job that takes me all over the state of michigan. i service water conditioning equipment and cover half of the mitten. traverse city to st joe all the way east to flint/jackson. my truck has reflected the amount of mile put on it. not so much the exterior. i am just now seeing spots of bubbling near the grill and gas cap door. i have some holes in the bed as the salt i carry exploited any scratches from hauling equipment in and out.

the interior has seen the worse of the wear. my foot has worn through the floor mats both carpeted and heavy rubber (not at the same time) and through the carpet below. the cloth seats were getting really thin and the foam padding was becoming non existent.

i hate to travel alone and have a weimaraner that id prefer to not be left alone and locked up for upto 15 hrs a day. he rides shot gun. his weight and claws had exacerbated the cloths condition. plus the staining from the drool. i tried many times with the rentable carpet cleaner to improve the look and smell of the seats but nothing seemed to penetrate the foam cushions.

a small hole turned into a tear followed by others. then my dog started to burry treats in the holes. the interior was not a good place to be. i felt sorry for the service techs at my ford dealer. i eventually had to put towels in for the dog to sit on and a patio cushion for my self to get back some of the support i had lost. lets just say that no one wanted to ride in my truck.

i had been trolling ebay for leather seats for a few years as that was the only thing i wanted the truck to have when i got it, but you dont get choice in buying used. try finding a set for a super cab. super rare! darn those seatbelts

anywho a "complete interior" came up for buy it now. 1200. and for that i got door trim, mem htd pwr seats, flow through center shift console, and some dash trim. i say "complete" because the seller forgot to ship the trim and after correcting that problem forgot to mention there was no driver door panel.

got my seats and yay! they were in great shape. fresh from a wrecked lariat with 54k. now just to rip out the old and in with the new.

first problem i ran into was getting the bolts (torx 55) out. snapped 4 sockets off. finally reverted to the hot wrench and a 3 foot breaker bar. managed to twist the torx pretty good and mangle the bolts but got them all out.

i had the center jump seat and had a sneaky suspicion that the center console i got wouldnt work at all. luckily i bought the other style center console in another auction. sold the shift console on ebay which canceled out the loss on the second console i bought.

the probelms:

well i was hoping that the seats would just bolt in and plug and play. no such luck. first my XLT had only the wiring for the seat belt pretensioners and seat position sensor. big black connector and small grey connector. there was nothing hiding under the carpet. that meant there was no way to slide the seats around to get access to the bolt holes or be able to position the seat for driving.

the seats had the memory package which made things worse and required many more expensive parts

doing some research here i saw that in order to get the heated seats to function id have to upgrade to EATC. so ebay to the rescue. saw that the trim bezel was different too and grabbed one of those.

attempted to swap climate controls out to find out wiring was different and i didnt have the right connectors. oh and that the blower control was different. needed a module instead of the resistors... and that i would have to get a cabin temp sensor and tube assembly

read that i would need to get a different cluster. took me a month or so for the right one to come up on ebay (most clusters were for floor shift and didnt have trip computer)

ordered a driver door panel from a nos supplier and paid way too much. had to track down the warm silver speaker grill (ebay tasca), and found a used window switch (ebay LKQ)

ordered from fordpartsgiant a nos floor harness and dash harness. EEK $800 using the vin from the donor truck.

began to strip out old interior. piece by piece. it would have been easier i bet to pull the whole dash out but i elected to just remove all of the trim as i was doing this alone in my driveway in near zero temps.

youll need fingers a foot long and arms the diameter of a childs to sneak around inside the dash to reach all the connectors. the worse was the sun load sensor and a connector just below it. there is a lot of sharp metal with your name on it. band aid might just be my middle name or maybe i should have bought some stock in the company. tangent, sorry my bad

getting the dash harness out was relatively easy compared to the floor harness. this thing goes all the way up to the top of the dash and all the way back the the high mount stop light. the rear trim had to come out and the headliner dropped. there were a million puch style connectors and plastic screws holding the harness down and i had quite the pile of fasteners going. then come to find out the harness does not have connectors for the 4 doors. nope! the wiring goes non stop into the doors to the locks, windows, and speakers.

with all the wiring out now it came time to lay in the new. cold weather plus wiring = solid rebar. i had to place a electric heater in the truck for a few hours with the wiring in order to get the plastic to relax enough to where it could be manipulated.

find out that there are a bunch of extra connectors on the new harness that i have no clue to where they go. maybe you guys can chime in. ( i do not have a running truck at this moment so i cannot say if everything is working).

new floor harness does not have wiring for the doors. there are 2 massive white circular connectors at the front and small grey ones for the rears. a quick search on fordparts.com shows i need $300 of wiring. but it doesnt say if that gets me everything for windows, locks, sound, and mirrors

i have the carpet back in and the seats in place and to my surprise the air bags didnt deploy and the seats do move. the truck wont start (it cranks) but i believe that is due to the connections under the cab that are different from my 05 to the connectors on the 08. i have to create a splice for that.

that is it for working on the truck this week. its been tiring

i will post pics as soon as i can and continue this thread as things develop.


p.s.

i decided to do a color swap of the interior. my interior used to be a sea of tan (medium pebble) but the sourced lariat seats were black as were the door trim. so i picked up a used leather steering wheel to replace the worn tan rubber one (ebay). found a black steering column shroud (tasca). black dash trim bezel - between airbag and glove box (tasca). both airbags black (ebay). glove box black (ebay). windshield defrost covers black (helmanford).

i have left the carpet, headliner, a pillar trim, and c pillar trim tan to compliment the tan color of the dash that is non removeable. plus it make the cabin a little more airy.