Well, the day started out good. Got another piece of the puzzle.
sending unit only $30.
My intention was to be able to post a nice new milestone tonight, but things don't always go as planned.
I finished building my new battery tray so that I could move the battery to the drivers side.
All ready for the battery, complete with a better strap down system so that hopefully I won't repeat the carnage from BB13
Anyway, once that was done, I got to work modifying the stock wiring harness to fit the battery in the new position, get rid of any extra wires I wouldn't need and incorporate my new underhood fuse/relay box. I pulled the entire wiring harness out and fixed quite a few questionable wiring "mods" that had been done over the years and then reinstalled it.
One of my goals with every project I undertake with the blazer is to keep it drivable as much as possible. I really don't want to end up with nothing but a 1/2 finished piece of garage art and the longer it sits unmoving, the closer it is to being just that.
So with that in mind, I reinstalled the wiring with my "upgrades" and set about making sure the truck was drivable again while I finished gathering the rest of what I need to actually drop the 6.0 in.
Once I got everything hooked up, I turned the key and the truck started right up!

Success... or so I thought. I started testing various electrical system, until I got to the blinkers.
Truck dies. No electrical at all. The good news is that the new fuse box did it's job and promptly blew the 30a fuse that provides power to the interior of the truck. The bad news is that I didn't have another 30a, so I dropped in a 40a to try and trace out the problem.
That's when the magic smoke got out.
As you can see, the purple wire melted up good. It's the power lead to the flasher so I probably fried that too.
At first I was sure I screwed up the rewiring somewhere, but I was very careful so after initial panic I pulled the harness back out and it turns out it was a routing problem.
I was able to trace the burnt wire up through the steering column connector to the point you can see in the pic. The burnt wiring stops right there and you can see the black/yellow wire right next to it is crimped through to bare wires.
I managed to smash these 2 wires between the column and the dash, causing a short.
So it's a setback, but at least it's only 1 burnt wire (and a couple of fuses).
Lesson learned, 30a fuse is the biggest I want on that circuit.

Hopefully I'll be able to post about the truck up and running again tomorrow. I've got to get at least one more trip into the mountains before the weather turns bad!